Any way possible to recover info on a quick formatted drive????

[danger47]

I need something to help me recover all info on a quick formatted drive, but............ I have already installed XP Pro on the same partition that I"m trying to recover all other info as well.

 

[danger47]

anyone?????????????

 

[CTho9305]

R-Studio makes a great NTFS recovery tool. It's not free (it's pretty expensive), but it's worked well for me.

 

[jdiddy]

Ontrack Easy Recovery Professional works well to but its expensive too.

 

[danger47]

Will it still work if I've already reinstalled xp pro on the partition I'm trying to recover the files from?

thanks in advance

 

[alm4rr]

http://forums.anandtech.com/me...9844&enterthread=y
software options listed in here

 

[CTho9305]

Originally posted by: danger47
Will it still work if I've already reinstalled xp pro on the partition I'm trying to recover the files from?

thanks in advance

You've probably overwritten a lot of the data, and anything you overwrote would be lost.

 

[danger47]

I realize I'll lose alot of data that's been overwritten, but what about the rest of the partition? It's a 60 gig partition and there were a lot of movies, music, saved emails and such. If I can recover most of it, it would be an enormous help.

 

[Codewiz]

Originally posted by: danger47
I realize I'll lose alot of data that's been overwritten, but what about the rest of the partition? It's a 60 gig partition and there were a lot of movies, music, saved emails and such. If I can recover most of it, it would be an enormous help.

Have you already installed something back on the drive? If not then DON'T.

Just find another small hard drive and install XP on it or find another computer to put the 60 gig drive in. After you get it running put your 60gig drive in and use one of the software packages listed to recover the data.

 

[Vexx]

It's not free or cheap, but GetDataBack has always worked well for me.
Runtime.org

 

[OLtimrNewbie]

Once upon a time... I recall reading in one of these threads... that Recycle Bin and Quick Format do not really delete all data. They just drop the first letter of the file name; which of course breaks the linking to that file. You might try (if you can remember the file name etc.) to search for files or folders that way. Example: My Documents = y Documents or My Pictures = y Pictures. I've never tried it myself; as I prefer to backup regularly.

" Blessed is he who makes backups."

 

[RSMemphis]

Well, the thing is: Quick Format does not delete anything. That's the good news.
Reinstalling something on that partition, however, really starts deleting the important parts, like the File Allocation Table. Although some of your data is still there, if it is fragmented, it can never be put together again, without a whole lot of work. And you don't know what has been written over anyway.
W/o the reinstallation, you would have had a good chance. But with a reinstallation, your chances are close to zero, and I cannot recommend buying a recovery program. Maybe some recovery programs still have the option of checking what they can rescue for free, and the rescuing is done in the paid for version, at least that would avoid the risk of buying a useless program.

 

[CTho9305]

Originally posted by: OLtimrNewbie
Once upon a time... I recall reading in one of these threads... that Recycle Bin and Quick Format do not really delete all data. They just drop the first letter of the file name; which of course breaks the linking to that file. You might try (if you can remember the file name etc.) to search for files or folders that way. Example: My Documents = y Documents or My Pictures = y Pictures. I've never tried it myself; as I prefer to backup regularly.

" Blessed is he who makes backups."

Back in the dos days, deleting a file just replaced the first letter with "?". It's different with NTFS. Also, quickformat does more than just rename files - it wipes all the filesystem tables. I got back the vast majority of my data once after accidentally writing an ffs filesystem over an NTFS one (I didn't know what I was doing with the OpenBSD partition tool), but I don't know if you'll get anything back if you replace an NTFS filesystem with another NTFS one, since a lot of the same sectors are probably used.

 

[OLtimrNewbie]

CTho9305 ... Thanks for the clarification on the renaming of files after deleting a file.

 

[spyordie007]

I realize I'll lose alot of data that's been overwritten, but what about the rest of the partition? It's a 60 gig partition and there were a lot of movies, music, saved emails and such. If I can recover most of it, it would be an enormous help.

The MFT is going to be trashed so you're going to need an application that can physically scan the drive and attempt to re-assemble them based on the data stream. Here are a couple that I found that claim they can do this (I've never tried):
http://www.runtime.org/gdb.htm
http://www.softwareshelf.com/products/display2.asp?p=11
http://skyscraper.fortunecity.com/amd/887/rescue/

Good Luck

 

[danger47]

Well it looks as if my goose is cooked !!!!! I finally found some reviews that state: "as long as the drive hasn't been rewritten after a quick format"... blah....blah....blah....

and.......... it has been rewritten with xp pro. so.........

but thanks to everyone for sending me useful links and all the help. I really appreciate it!!!