Formatted Drive.........

[maheshlikes6]

Dear All,
This is mahesh Kumar , I was using Windows & from past 1year i didnt found any problem. but yesterday i got error message while starting my latop...it was showing start windows normally or another option ....But both option didnt work ...so wat i did was tried to install windows 7 once again on C Drive.....but without knowledge d- drive was formatted now and installation was cancelled.
My question was whether I can retrieve my files from formatted drive?????

Please Help me Because all my important files were in that only...even i cannot install windows7 it showing some errors......

 

[maheshlikes6]

Hi all ,
I found my hard disk had failured....So i am planning to buy new one please suggest me good one....and say me whether i can have my backup from that corrupted hard disk........

 

[Mychael]

As to buying a Hard Drive. WD (Western digital) is always popular but I don't think there are any real 'bad' brands around. Cannot answer your question about backup. I'll leave that to someone else.

 

[lonewolfmage]

Recovering files and back up

Greetings maheshlikes6~

Regarding first your "formatted drive". It MAY be possible to recover SOME of those files depending on how "far" the formatting went.

If when you did the install and format, it MAY have left som remnants of the files. If you look for a program called Recuva.. made by a company called Piriform it MAY be able to recomver some of the files and some bits of others.. againit just depends on HOW FAR the formating went.

By "how far" what I mean is if when you formatted to do Win 7 if it TOTALLY "destroyed" the files or not. SOMETIMES (at least with previous versions of windows) they do leave some remnants behind. I have seen it happen on more than on occasion.

Second regrading the "corrupted" drive. Recuva MAY also be able to ru on it depending how bad the corruption is. You dont acctually state what type of hard drive it is but.. some (if not all) Hard drive manufacturers do have a "software kit" you can get from them and they can do a scan of the drive.

If its not to badly corrupted you could feasbly get the files off and then back them up to another means of storage, for instance a jump/flash drive, cd or DVD , or to another hard drive, depending on how much information you want to save.

Mind you all these solution are NOT GURANTEED 100% to work they are just suggestions for you to think about.

Good luck~
LoneWolf

Edited to add as i just looked again at your post: I see you mention you have a laptop. I'm guessing, by the way you describe things you had on eof two things 1) your drive was partitioned or 2 you had an external Hard drive connected and accidentially remormatted that one(D drive). Depending on what youe set up is WILL make a diffrence as to what you can and cannot do with the information I gave earlier.

 

[Super Sarge]

Me I favor Seagate drives, having worked in security at a Seagate R and D facility, I saw daily the testing that hard drives received. I will always pick Seagate as my hard drive.

 

[catilley1092]

Seagate, Samsung, WD are all excellent drives. Hitachi is a good notebook drive, as mine has surpassed the 500 day mark in run time, according the the SMART data. But it's rattling during load. We'll see if it makes it to 600 days.

In regard to the OP's question, as lonewolf has stated, how far the format went has a lot to do with recovering your data. Windows 7 doesn't take near as long as XP to format (you don't have the choice of quick or normal), so it appears to be a quick format, which may work to your advantage. But I can't and wont promise that you can retrieve anything.

Recuva is one of the best, and easiest tools to use. Glary Utilities has a file undeleter that may be helpful. When a drive has been formatted with a Windows OS, it's not quite as destructive as DBAN, but still, formatting is destructive.

How far did you format into your "D" drive, before stopping it? When installing Windows 7, it shows the percentage that the files are expanding, not the percentage of formatting as Win 2K & XP does.

What you may need is a partition/data recovery tool. I found a freeware one for you, I hope that it helps.

http://www.dtidata.com/ntfs_partition_repair.htm

Best of Luck,
Cat