Help, I wiped my hard drive accidentally ? Need free software to get it all back ? :(

45 magnum

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Dec 13, 2015
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Help, I wiped my hard drive accidentally ? Need free software to get it all back ? :(

I have a couple of mechanical sata backup drives that I save stuff onto to be safe, so I was messing about with some things and booom, I accidentally clicked the option to wipe the one I am talking about.

What is the best and easiest freeware to use to bring it all back, we are talking about maybe 150GB's worth of data.

I can obviously use other software that costs money but use it on either a trial run or I know someone that can get me said product full version, so I guess free is best but doesnt have have to be.

Hope someone can help thanks :)
 

SBMfromLA

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Most of those "free" data recovery software allow you to install and scan... but you need to pay to actually recovery anything... But let me just warn you from experience... I've used a few of those programs in the past to recover data... yes, they do work... but in each case, I was only able to recover about a handful of files and half of those files turned out to be corrupted and unusable or filled with errors.
 

45 magnum

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Dec 13, 2015
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Thanks, I would rather try than not though, plus thats why I mentioned it doesnt have to be free software, can be any I guess, suppose I could get my hands on anything, I just thought there might have been good free ones that all, but ok we will focus now all free or not free ones ?
 

45 magnum

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Dec 13, 2015
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I was doing too many things at the one time and to be honest I am not sure what I done, I can only assume it was format or something like that, but either way I have heard many many times over the years that you can recover most data from mechanical drives, I have never ever tried anything like recovery though, so I am really at a loss with that kind of stuff.

If you mean was I trying to get rid of data on a drive to be safer etc ? then the answer to that is No, I know that with old sata mechanical drives the only way to be sure data is UNrecoverable under any circumstance is to smash the electro magnetic plates somehow, for example take a very sharp good electric drill bit too them and drill in several place, the plates then shatter and then no one can ever recover the data, but again No, that isnt what I was trying to do, it was purely accidental and my own mistake :(