Recover Formatted Hard Drive Urgent help required.

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Christiaan Lourens

Christiaan Lourens

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Aug 1, 2013
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Hey everyone,

Well I guess my name today is bad luck Brian. (going to give some quick history)

So in December my secondary pc gave in on me, I sent it in to the store. They told me my motherboard had given in. I then took a similarly old pc (they are both +- 5-6 years old) to the store and told the technician that he can mix and match the parts to make one working pc. However the 2 terrabyte hard drive is not to be touched. He can format the other 2 as much as he wants but leave the 2 terrabyte alone. (this is one of those you only had 1 job moments)

Well he got it working after 3 months (they really are that bad and lazy) he lost 2 of my stainless steel screws that came with the one pc's chassis they are expensive and I want them back but he doesn't know where they are. He probably stole them. Well he formatted the 2 terrabyte HDD now I am in need of some urgent assistance from Tomshardware-land!

47204392.jpg


You guys have to help me recover this fiasco caused by this incompetent child.

So here is the low down:
2 Terrabyte HDD is formatted.
Seagate Barracuda 2TB 7200rpm

At this time only windows 7 is installed on that HDD.

I beg of you help me recover +- 9 years of data.

This was my primary backup HDD that he destroyed.

I'm not sure what I feel right now, my inside feels on fire and empty at the same time.

Zeus sad... :(
 
Solution
Shaun o
Your not going to be pleased at this answer.

If the drive was formatted, then left that would of been fine.
You could of connected the drive and used, recovery software to get all the prior data off it before the format.

However the problem is, when you format a drive, it resets what we call the flags
That denote if new data can be written to a section of it. As all is flagged to write data any where as free space.
Where as when it`s not formatted it is protected from doing so in a sense.

The problem is if windows was installed on the drive.
Then any data prior to the format may be overwritten as it was marked to do so by a later format.

You could still recover some of the files off the drive though.
But a lot of it will be missing...
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Shaun o

Shaun o

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Oct 7, 2007
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Your not going to be pleased at this answer.

If the drive was formatted, then left that would of been fine.
You could of connected the drive and used, recovery software to get all the prior data off it before the format.

However the problem is, when you format a drive, it resets what we call the flags
That denote if new data can be written to a section of it. As all is flagged to write data any where as free space.
Where as when it`s not formatted it is protected from doing so in a sense.

The problem is if windows was installed on the drive.
Then any data prior to the format may be overwritten as it was marked to do so by a later format.

You could still recover some of the files off the drive though.
But a lot of it will be missing due to installing something after a format of the drive.

I guess something is better than nothing, If you wish to attempt part recovery of old files.

Right so if the drive is in the same system.
First of all you need. This bellow download it and install on the pc.
http://www.easeus.com/partition-recovery/

Ok to recover files set the program to scan and recover the files off the 2tb drive.
It needs to scan and rebuilt the old data table to recover files.
You will have an option to select a destination drive.
You must select a drive that is not being scanned or data recovery rebuilt.
The program will create and image of the rebuilt drive data.
You cannot select the source and destination of the image to be the same.
As it is a catch 22 situation it will over write what it is trying to read and rebuild. In other words you will enter a loop because the data is constantly changing.
That is why you write to another drive.
And that is why the rebuild image must be sent to another drive to avoid it.

If you choose to write the image back to the same drive. then it will reconstruct it.
And windows that is currently installed will cease to work after it. but hold some or all of the prior information or files recovered. It must be done from the image or rebuilt of a destination drive.


Your best option is to send recovery to another drive with enough space equal to the source.

I know it`s a pain, but at least you should get some files back.

All the best.
 
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