How to recover files and folders from formatted or reformatted hard drive?

Introduction

Can we recover data from formatted hard drive? I have the 40GB Lap Top Hard Drive that was corrupted and all partitions disappeared, so I format it and think I lost all my files on that hard drive. Somebody recommended that I should try to recover the data from the corrupted hard drive. But I have formatted the hard drive, is that still possible to recover the data?

Solution

If you accidentally formatted your hard drive and all your data is gone, you can still recover your data follow the steps below.

1. Stop what you're doing

After formatting a partition, if you want to unformat files from the formatted partition, please do not write new files to it again, that's to say, you'd better stop using the formatted partition any more. When you format your partition, more precisely, your format type is high level format that most users execute, only erases the address table, not the data itself. Then you should stop writing new data on your formatted partition which will overwrite the original data. You should know that recovering overwritten files will be more complicated. Usually a computer specialist can recover most information on the disk by himself. Otherwise, you can free download a program that enables you to recover data from the formatted partition yourself.

2. Find the right format recovery software

Popular data recovery software on the market:
EaseUS Data Recovery Wizard
Recover My Files (can't create image)

In my personal view, I prefer to EaseUS Data Recovery Wizard. It's only about 4 MB and won't take me much disk space. While recovery my files is about 15 MB. I don't want to waste a second to wait. And I have a thought long time ago when I have not formatted my partition, never recover my lost data on the original corrupted drive, because this may cause another attack to my drive which may cause permanent data loss, I bet nobody wants to take a chance with our lost data. Then I choose a data recovery which can create an image of my disk. I think it's safer. Until now I think Data Recovery Wizard is a right choice I have ever made, it has no limitation of file type for me to recover, it won't charge more if I want to recover more important files. The only defect of this freeware is its interface, it's really wired. In short, this ugly freeware recovers my files and helps me a lot. I won't uninstall it from my computer.

The above is my recovery experience with EaseUS Data Recovery Wizard I want to share with you and I hope this has been of some help. Learn more...

How to recover files from formatted partition?

Note: Do not download software or save recovered file on the partition that contains lost data, this may cause permanent data loss!

3. Don't let this happen again

Although this format recovery process is very smooth and successful, I learnt that how important a backup is. The best method of data recovery is a good preemptive data backup plan. Here I recommend a backup freeware also comes from EaseUS: Todo Backup Free, if you are good with its Data Recovery Wizard, I am sure you will be surprised that how can EaseUS give away such a complete and full featured free backup tool. Follow the step-by-step instruction to back up your hard drive so that this sort of thing will never happen again.

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