Can data be recovered if hard drive has been formatted?
I formatted my mother’s hard drive and reinstalled a fresh Windows XP for her. But I lost track and totally forgot to backup her files. Are those files still recoverable even tho I have formatted her hard drive?
Tagged with: hard drive • tho • windows xp
Filed under: Data Security
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You have a chance of recovery but it really depends on a lot of factors.
- Format: This doesn’t delete the files on the disk but it does update the file tables to indicate that the disk space is free. The data stored essentially lost any pointers to it.
- Reinstall: This would write files to space that is marked free.
- Size of the disk: If you have a small disk, the chance of overwriting old data increases. Example: If you have a 4 GB disk and install MS Windows XP, the install will take approximately 2GB of disk space. This means that you have a 50/50 chance of overwriting the data previously stored on a location on the disk. (NOTE: Disk optimization techniques may affect this, but we’ll keep from getting too technical here).
- Disk activity: The more you use the disk after accidentally deleting files, the greater the chance you’ll overwrite data you’d like to recover.
To increase your chance of recovering data, leave the system turned off until you are ready to attempt recovery. Ideally you would connect the disk as a slave drive to another system to avoid the OS writing any temporary files to the disk too.
Most computer shops will sell some sort of file recovery software. Just ask them for which one they recommend and go with it. If you can’t find a version, I’ll recommend Recover My Files. I bought it at BestBuy and it has worked for me. I did a reformat and realized I didn’t backup the latest MS Outlook PST file (ended up almost losing about one weeks worth of email).
It could be recovered right up to the point that you did a reinstall, after that NO
A format actually leaves all the data on the disk. It just "clears" the directory structure and the allocation tables. There’s recovery software that can scan a harddisk and piece it back together. But since you have reinstalled windows it’s quite likely the files are now overwritten.
its 50/50 if the space where the files were located have not been overwritten you should be able to recover them using one of the many file recovery software packages - pretty much all of them allow you to download a trial version - from this you can see the files if they are recoverable, but to actually recover the files you need to pay for the software
There are software tools that can recover data, but they aren’t 100% effective. You can also pay a lot of money to a business that specializes in data recovery, but this is often far too expensive for the average person. If you did a quick reformat, you have a higher chance of recovering your data with basic software tools because your data is still there, but it appears as blank space. A full reformat makes it much more difficult if not impossible to recover data by even the best tools available because all the old data on your drive gets written over.
It is a yes/no answer.
You might take the help of a professional data recovery agent which can assist you in recovering the data. It is pretty difficult to do on your own.
Data is written to blank spaces on your hard drive first. Then, it is written over the erased data. Even if you format your hard drive some of the old data is still there. The only way to be sure the data is completely erased is to use a strong magnet on the drive or destroy it.
The government uses what they call a wiping program which writes zeros and ones randomly across your drive several times to completely write over the previous data. Read the attached article for more information.