Possible to retrieve data after reformatting? (XP)

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Phumfeinz

New Member
Basically, I'm being sponsored by my girlfriend to go and live in Canada, and part of the application requests proof (phone bills, photos, emails, chat logs etc) that the relationship is real, not just for convenience blah blah.

Chat logs of MSN conversations are considered proof, but unfortunately I recently needed to re-install Windows XP and of course, everything was erased.

(And of course thanks to my brilliant luck I didn't find out chat logs are important till after the reformatting)

Is there any way at all of somehow retrieving the chat logs? Or are they gone for good?

Your help is appreciated, thanks.
 
have you used you computer much after your reformatting? If the data has not been rewritten on, then it will still be sitting on your hard drive and therefore you can recover it.
 
Used it every day since reformatting. About a week ago I did it.

Re-installed service pack 2, all the windows updates, various programs etc. Just basically getting it back to how it was before I had to re-install windows.
 
I thought when you formated your hard drive all date is lost, where does it go when you format your hardrive?
 
Jonyboy said:
I thought when you formated your hard drive all date is lost, where does it go when you format your hardrive?
Click to expand...

nope data is never gone until those sectors it is on are physically over written with new data. When you format a drive or delete data you are basically just telling the OS what sectors can be used as free space, then the table of contents is usually deleted. So things like folders are completely gone but the data is still there. So, nothing is physically gone at all, its just marked that it can be overwritten if need be.

the only way to securely get rid of data is to physically destroy the hard drive so nothing can retrieve it.
 
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