How to recover files from a formatted Hard disk?

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lostsoulal2

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Some time ago a few data files became unexplainably corrupted but this stopped my backup software backing up the whole hard disk as it said it could not read all the files………

To overcome this I transferred all the files from that hard disk to another but because of the corruption I had to do it manually directory by directory as windows explorer could not cope with the corrupted files. I then had to change all my software to point to the new file locations, but I have just found out that I missed one ! And the data files from this program I only use occasionally were being saved to the old corrupt disk…………..

I had kept the corrupted disk unused for about nine months and just recently reformatted it, but luckily have not as yet saved any files to it.

The normal file recovery programs only work on currently Deleted Files, does anyone know of any software (Hopefully Free) that will recover files from a Hard Disk that has been formatted?

Thanks

(PC Running windows XP – Disk is NTFS file format)
 
did you do a quick or full format?
 
I had a peek about 10 minute ago to see how the recovery process was getting on and it said the estimated time left was 2 days.....................

I just hope at the end that it finds the file I am looking for! It has got to trundle through about 140gigabytes of data.....







Patience, young grasshopper!
 
These things will take a very long time to recover the data...I usually use EasyRecoveryPro and have gotten abtou 70% of files from formatted volumes
 
Good news is imo when you do a quick format it just erases the file allocation tables and leaves all the files physically intact on the disk. So when this does complete you should get pretty good results.
 
If you know exactly what type of file you are after there is a much quicker way.

You can get a program called Scalpel which will run in command line. You have a config file that goes with it where you can set the file signatures that you want it to carve out. So if you just wanted .jpg files you would use the (typical) header \xff\xd8\xff\xe0\x00\x10 and the (typical) footer \xff\xd9.

That will run over the image/drive and carve out only the type of files you want.
 
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