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How to Get back Data After Format

M

maldacai

Junior Member
Hi

I'm not sure if this can be done, but if someone can point me in the right direction it would be great.

Can data be recovered from a hard drive after it has been over written with another OS.

Here's the deal. A friend of mine has 1 hard drive with 2 partitions. The first partition has the OS (Win XP) the second partition has the data. On the weekend I reinstalled the OS on his First Partition and all was well... After I left, he had some probablem and thought he'd redo it... and he installed the OS on to the 2nd partition giving him 2 OS's.

Is there software out there can can recover data from the 2nd partiton after it has had an OS installed on it??

Please let me know if this is possible...

Thanks
 
Oy...

Basically, any data that was really 'overwritten' by the OS files is gone (a data recovery firm MIGHT be able to pull some of it back). Files on the rest of the disk (since I assume he formatted the partition) are still 'there', in theory, but you'll need data recovery software to get at it (and some of it might be totally gone). Search this forum and you should find plenty of info.
 
If he formatted the second partition prior to installing the OS, nothing can be done - it's gone. If he didn't and just installed it on the already formatted partition it should still be there. You should be able to access it from either OS on either partition, depending on the file system.
 
Originally posted by: viivo
If he formatted the second partition prior to installing the OS, nothing can be done - it's gone.
Click to expand...

Not true - 'formatting' really just erases the file system information. It doesn't actually wipe the drive clean. That's why data recovery software can often pull quite a bit of the old data off of a 'formatted' drive.

Overwriting the drive with zeroes or random data (a so-called 'low-level format') WILL permanently destroy the information (excepting extremely expensive data recovery services that can disassemble your drive and use specialized hardware to attempt to recover what used to be on there). Overwriting it with new data enough times should permanently erase it, though.
 
I believe he just put in the XP cd and installed the OS on the 2nd partition... I'll have to ask if he formatted before hand
 
Thanks Guys,


R-Studio worked like a charm... my friend will be able to recover the main data he needed.

I tried R-Studio on one of the work pc's I have here, I was amazed on how far back you can see data, there must of been stuff from at least 3 system wipes ago.

Cool


Thanks again
 
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