[Jrenter2]

My computer was acting funny this morning and my wife decided to run the recovery disk while I was out. In the process it didn't give her the option to restore without formatting the drive. So, when I got home, she had told me that the drive was wiped out of everything....our personal stuff, my business files, my training stuff from here...etc... I need a software to "unformat" this drive or be able to get "some" of the stuff back. Programs I can reinstall...the data and others I can't get everything back as I haven't got a "current" enough backup for some of the more recent things I have done. ALL HELP on this would be greatly appreciated.


Thanks in advance...

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Im no expert on this, but you might find some useful info here...

http://www.computerhope.com/unformat.htm

[pandammonia]

Im no expert on this, but you might find some useful info here...

http://www.computerhope.com/unformat.htm

[wannabe1]

Hi Jrenter2...

You've got yourself a pickle here and it's a sour one. Once a drive is formatted, I know of no program available that will "unformat" it. The procedure at the link above will remove formatting, but will not undo what has been done to your machine. Do not use the machine at all if you intend to try a data recovery.

That said, there are data recovery programs available that may be able to get some of the data back. I've had the best luck with GetDataBack. The download is free and you can run it to see if it can recover your data...if it does successfully recover data, it will show you what it has recovered. However, in order to actually recover the data, you must buy a license for the software. It's $69 for the FAT version or $79 for the NTFS version. You'll need the version for the file system you use.

You'll need to set the drive as a slave to another machine and run the recovery on it that way...and it takes a really long time. I recovered a 30 gig drive a while back that took 12 hours, but it recovered virtually everything. After a format/install, your results may not be as good, but it should be able to get some of it. It would definitely be worth a try.

wannabe1

Edited by wannabe1, 23 December 2006 - 06:11 PM.