Data Recovery From A Formatted Hard Drive
Data recovery software is invaluable for finding lost, deleted or corrupted files. Finding data on a formatted drive can prove to be a little bit more troublesome. In this article I’ll show you what some of the difficulties are.
Disks are normally formatted to help make the computer startup faster or reinstall the Windows operating system. This is fine if you back up your data first. If you forget to do this then data recovery tools become your only option.
Using these applications can prove to be quite straightforward. Install the program onto a second drive, launch the application and select the formatted disk for a full scan. The scan will only take a few minutes depending on how big the drive actually is. When it completes, copy whatever files you want onto a new drive.
The first difficulty you might see is further data loss. This can happen if you install the data recovery tool itself onto the formatted drive. Installation files will overwrite your original data. Likewise, do not clone files after the scan completes back onto the formatted drive for the same reason.
All data recovery software will struggle to find any files however if the formatted disk was cleans down using advanced formatting applications. Some programs are capable of wiping away data clusters on the disk. This is ideal for data protection when selling on a computer but does make data recovery near impossible.
One difficulty some users will experience is a loss of data or file fragments if they leave it for too long before attempting to use data recovery tools. Any use of the system and the formatted drive for storing documents, images, etc. will result in your original data gradually beginning to be overwritten. Some of the better data recovery tools will be able to find fragments of documents if you’re lucky so you may still be able to salvage some file elements.
