reformatted by mistake, recovered photos not showing

L

lunercrab

New Member
Ok so me like a dummy mistakenly reformatted my external harddrive...i've used a few recovery programs and was able to recover most files, but all the pic files i've recovered i can't preview, is there a way to fix this? and correct me if i'm wrong, but as long as i don't rewrite any data to this drive, i can still recover most files? i'm currently using stellar phoenix recovery software, anyone suggest maybe a better software to use?
 
I was pretty sure that if you reformat your hard drive, you won't be able to recover anything from it. Reformatting is deleting your existing partition and then you create a new one. I guess I was wrong. I stumbled upon this article on google.

The only data that will be lost is if you have reinstalled programs onto the drive after the format - eg. a new installation of Windows will overwrite the first part of the disk, but the remaining data on the disk can still be recovered (this is no big deal as most of your user created files will not be located on the first part of the disk anyway).

I suggest you download Recover My Files from www.recovermyfiles.com or using this link: http://download.getdata.com/RecoverMyFiles-Setup.exe.

I would suggest that you run a "Complete Format Recover" search. In the drive selection window, select and search the drive letter, but if you no longer have one, search the "physical drive". In the file types selection window, search only for the default selected file types (dont add file types to the search or you will just slow it down).
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http://forums.getdata.com/computer-data-recovery/1011-recovery-possible-after-reformatting.html
 
lunercrab said:
but as long as i don't rewrite any data to this drive, i can still recover most files?
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You are correct. In most cases the files are still on the drive, but the "address" to them has been lost (can't think of the best/correct term :P) But as long as nothing's been written over them, you SHOULD be able to recover them...

Look into ****** Data Recovery Wizard Pro. I'm pretty sure this is the one I used a while back and had pretty good luck with it... Essentially a card reader corrupted one of my microSD cards, but I was able to recover a fair amount off of it. I still lost some photos and such though...
 
yeah i tried some jpg file restore and managed to get half my jpgs to show (in other words the pic will show the top half and the bottom half would be grey) so does that mean that perhapps my recovery software somehow split up the photo somewhere? so does that mean i should restore all files found on the harddrive to hopefully find the "other" half of my pics? also these pics and such were on my original harddrive that i just reformatted as well (this one on purpuse) and installed a fresh copy of xp, could i maybe be able to find some of the missing files on this drive as well?
 
I would try some other software, but I can't guarantee that the photos will fully recover. You're simply not getting the full file with that software. Either it's missing or the software doesn't know how to interpret the findings.

As for the other drive, you might as well check it out too. Who knows, you may luck up and find some photos that don't show up on your other drive. Recovering data isn't black and white. Some things show up no problem, some things are corrupt, some things are just gone. It really depends on the software, if it's able to actually find the beginning and ending of the files, interpret it, nothing's been written over, etc etc.
 
The_Other_One said:
I would try some other software, but I can't guarantee that the photos will fully recover. You're simply not getting the full file with that software. Either it's missing or the software doesn't know how to interpret the findings.

As for the other drive, you might as well check it out too. Who knows, you may luck up and find some photos that don't show up on your other drive. Recovering data isn't black and white. Some things show up no problem, some things are corrupt, some things are just gone. It really depends on the software, if it's able to actually find the beginning and ending of the files, interpret it, nothing's been written over, etc etc.
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actually i just used that data recovery on my main drive, the one with the fresh os, and sure enough after a quick scan i'm getting most if not all of my missing pics back...i'm gunna run it then on my external and see if i can recover more...thanks guys
 
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