Looking for data recovery application

[greatromances]

Well my mom has a really big problem. Her computer had a crash the other day and wouldn't boot into windows, so she had someone in the neighborhood tinker with it and advised he re-installed windows. Bad idea, because he didn't back up anything that was on the drive. My mom had around 300-400 pictures on the drive and quite a few very important emails that were completely wiped when windows re-formatted (quick). So here I am with a very very sad mother that's lost the past years worth of pictures because of some idiot who didn't think to backup her files before trying to fix it. The worst part about it is she never backed up any of the important stuff herself. Very sad, I feel awful she didn't come to me instead. I've never messed around with software recover tools, but would there be any type of application out there that can possibly recover some of the lost data? I wouldn't think there would be any hope after a quick NTFS re-format, but hopefully something can be done. I've told her there's almost no hope if he's reinstalled windows fresh, but i've never run into a problem like this before so i'm only really taking a guess. Any suggestions?

 

[duragezic]

Here's one very recent link.


Well I don't believe a format would really erase everything. Problem is if her pictures resided in a location where the newly installed windows now uses, they are gone for good. But maybe they are later in the drive or something.. I don't know the specifics. But the trial for GetDataBackNTFS will at least show you what it can recover then you can buy it. But Outlook emails I have no idea where they are stored so I'm not sure about getting them back.

 

[stirfryguy]

getdataback is a nice program to use if the drive has been formatted you may not find 100% but you will be able to get some back.

although I love to use knoppix if the drive somehow got corrupted on me

 

[WildHorse]

http://forums.anandtech.com/messageview...atid=32&threadid=1925319&enterthread=y

The free recovery app noted there is http://www.softperfect.com/products/filerecovery/

 

[greatromances]

Thanks for the suggestions. I'm going to try all of them to see if I can recover any of the files. Wish me luck!