external hard drive recovery

[antec74]

hi, i have managed to wipe my external hd which had all my photos on!!!
does anyone know if there is a free recovery software program or a good priced company in the uk that can retrieve them for me?

[oolon]

Its not free but have a look at disk internals software you can try before you buy so you can see if it will work before parting with cash.

[Splash]

You could try Recuva for free or GetDataBack for NTFS/FAT dependent on your file system, dependent on the value (sentimental or otherwise) it may be worth contacting Disklabs or someone similar, but if you do be prepared for some serious costs. Obviously if recovering data don't install the recovery application to the external disk, and don't recover the data to that disk (or you'll be overwriting the data you're trying to recover)

[ChaosSystem]

I've used Ontrack Easy Recovery for deleted files.
http://www.ontrackdatarecovery.co.uk...very-standard/

[peterb]

www.runtime.org do some data recovery software. I haven't used their data recovery products, but I have used some of their other stuff - it did what it claimed to do.

In what way did you 'wipe' your disk? If you 'only' re-partitioned it (and haven't used the disk since) then your data is safe and any recovery software only needs to recreate the partition table(s).

If you "re-formatted" (in quotes because it doesn't areformat the disk!) then you have reset the master file table (if it was NTFS) and while the data is still there, it will take much longer to recover. If you have used the disk since the "re-format" then the chances of 100% data recovery start to decline.

[SLS]

To be clear: If you've written anything on to the drive, individual files etc, chances are you have already made software recovery of the full data impossible. The more you write on it, the less you will be able to recover, so for example, if you had installed Windows onto it mistakenly you would lose Gigabytes worth of your pictures, though not necessarily all of them, in this case the only software I know of to assist is Runtime's GetDataBack (as linked above) - Please note, the free version of GDB will only allow you to recover individual files one at a time. - you have to buy it to unlock the "Copy" ability and recover all found files simultaneously.

I use Recuva from Piriform(creators of CCleaner) and also Undelete Plus 2.98 (available from Cnet) when files are just Deleted accidentally, but "wipe" sounds like you've formatted the drive at least...

[SLS]

Double-post