Can I recover data from a drive that I formatted and defragged?.........

[nexialist]

from my Windows 2000 drive with all apps and data.

I did a new XP install on a new WD 160 HD. I re-installed the apps and copied most of the saved files, mp3's, etc.

Then I re-formatted my old drive and made it a non-booting drive for srorage. I defragged it and backed up my new system to it using Norton ghost.

Now I find I'm missing lot's of Word docs.

What product (preferreably cheap or free) can get em back for me?

Dan

 

[montag451]

Unlikely, but not impossible.

You MIGHT be able to salvage SOME [very few] files, but if you have a few lifetimes to spare, you could dl a sector editor that will allow you to look at each sector individually for text/hex/ascii. You will only have about 320 million to look through [i might have got some decimal point wrong somewhere].

Try getdataback, or spinrite6, or recover4all.

If you had just formatted, it would be possible to get most of your files back, or at least some serious scraps of text.
Once data has been written on top of old data [as in defrag, or new install of OS], then I think you would need 'forensic' data recovery - BIG MONEY