How to Recover Data From Formatted Hard Drive

[bob.thomas.pt]

Hello Guys,

I am in a big problem; last night I had completed erased my whole drive data. When I inserted my Seagate external hard drive into the Windows 10 computer, it asked me for formatting the drive to get access to it. I did not find any way to get the access on the drive, and finally, I formatted it. The drive had my lots of precious pictures and video there were some important documents also. Now I wanted all my deleted files back. Can anyone please help me here?

[spolsh]

You could try a freeware solution like Recuva.

[virtuo]

I'd also say that if the drive previously had data no it, and Windows has failed to find a file system, then the drive may have been somewhat knackered anyway.

[g8ina]

Monitoring

[Bagnaj97]

Providing all you've done is format the drive, and haven't subsequently written anything else to it, you should be able to get most or all of the data back (assuming there's nothing wrong with the disk itself). The important thing to note is that if you do things wrong when trying to get the data back, it's very easy to make the situation worse. If you aren't confident of what you're doing and the data's important, find a data recovery service, send the disk to them and eat the cost.

The way I've recovered a disk in a similar situation is I made a clone of the drive using DD, then used testdisk/photorec to recover the data.


Whether you attempt recovery yourself, get somebody to do it for you, or resign yourself to never seeing the data again, learn from this. Backups are important!

[peterb]

If you do want to try to recover the data yourself, make a bit by bit clone of the drive onto a known good drive, and perform the recovery on the clone. Then if you do mess up, you can always start again (to be really careful, clone the clone, and work on that. If the original drive is on its last legs, you have a clone of it, which you leave untouched, and work off the clone of the clone.

And in future - keep a backup of essential data

[scaryjim]

... If you aren't confident of what you're doing and the data's important, find a data recovery service, send the disk to them and eat the cost. ...

This. This and more This. All of the This.

The kind of recovery you're talking about is non-trivial. Not necessarily difficult, mind you, but definitely non-trivial.

The fact that you've registered on a tech forum just to ask this question kind of implies that you don't really know what you're doing when it comes to data recovery. So while there are ways to deal with this at home if you're a confident/competent tech, if there's something really important on there I'd very strongly advise getting a professional to deal with it.

[lslizzysmith002]

Hi Bob,

Usually, drive shows the error message of formatting because of forcefully disconnecting the drive without using the “Safely Remove” option. Because of accidently disconnection of the hard drive, the partition table of the disk becomes corrupted and it requires formatting to give access again to the drive.

Electronic devices are very sensitive in nature and can easily damage which may lead to a data loss problem. To prevent this data loss issue, a user should always backup their important data. But, if you missed to do so, then you can go with the data recovery tools like Recuva, SPWDR, PhotoRec, etc.

[AlphaA1]

Sometimes when that message comes up you could try reconnecting it to see if you get access to it. Also you should not have formatted it as it could have been accessed by other programs without one . But a simple format still is not to destructive so you still have a chance to recover the data but you would need to either find a professional or a very competent tech saavy friend as there are some guidelines be followed even when using simple click and recover software.

[i7Baby]

There's quite a bit of software available. Pay for - http://www.toptenreviews.com/softwar...very-software/ and free - https://fossbytes.com/top-best-free-...software-2016/

You can also find more info on any of them eg http://www.easeus.com/datarecoverywi...-partition.htm

But remember - this has some risk to it. The less experience you have, the more the risk. Also the more valuable the data, the higher the risk. A data recovery specialist can cost you hundreds to thousands of dollars. Get quotes. Determine how valuable getting the data back is to you.

I just had my 2TB HDD die. I've been slack with back-ups and only had about 95% of current data. But about 1/5th of what was missing I could reconstruct. Which is what I did. I decided that was the best path for me - with limited finances.

[Wasster]

Why not use recovery tool to help you ?

[Fantom]

I have had luck in the past by putting a drive in a bag and then in the freezer for a few hours, the temperature decrease can allow the drive to be read for a short period.

Sorry, just realised the drive is not dead, just formatted, you may struggle, hopefully you only did a quick format? if so you may be able to recover it with software like Recuva or GetDataBack

[peterb]

I have had luck in the past by putting a drive in a bag and then in the freezer for a few hours, the temperature decrease can allow the drive to be read for a short period.

Sorry, just realised the drive is not dead, just formatted, you may struggle, hopefully you only did a quick format? if so you may be able to recover it with software like Recuva or GetDataBack

I hope that, in the 12 months since the OP requested help, that the problem has been resolved

[SUMMONER]

I hope that, in the 12 months since the OP requested help, that the problem has been resolved

Did the OP even come back to look at the thread after starting it?

[peterb]

Did the OP even come back to look at the thread after starting it?

No, I think I’ll just close the thread. It’s one of those that attracts post count pumpers! and spam