FurrCindy :
Hi- I reformatting my drive, but now I an't find any of my Word documents or the documents folder. Can I get the documents back? Where do I look?
Whether you can get your documents back depends. First off did you do a Quick format or a Full format. A Quick format just changes a few things on the disk so the operating system thinks it's empty but your data is still there. A Full format writes zeros to every part of the disk. There are lots of programs that will recover most or all of the data from a Quick format. Ask around for recommendations. There are supposedly some programs that will even let you recover some information from a Full format.
One thing I can tell you is DON'T write to the disk you formatted. That will make it much harder or even impossible to recover your data. Disconnect either the power or data cable from the hard drive you formatted so you don't do this. Besides the possibility of forgetting and writing to it by accident, Windows sometimes likes to write various little housekeeping files to hard drives which as I said above will cause problems.
Another thing to consider is what kind and how much data can be recovered. Some of the data may be completely unrecoverable. Some may be corrupted. Set your expectations accordingly. And finally if the data you want to recover is REALLY important like the records you need to keep your business running you will have to bite the bullet and send your disk off to a hardware disk recovery service. Those places cost in the thousands of dollars.
Good luck!