Jan 21 2011
Data Recovery After Format | How To Retrieve Lost Documents
Free software tools make it possible to perform a data recovery after format of a drive. In this post I’ll present how to use these tools and some of the things that could reduce the amount of files which are found.
Formatting a disk is usually done as a last resort. It can be helpful to format the drive to clear out some space, to help make the PC startup faster or reinstall a faulty operating system. The trouble is that you may regret not backing up your data prior to doing this.
Thankfully, data recovery tools can easily identify many of your lost documents. It is important to make sure and install the program into separate partition. Reusing the formatted drive could actually overwrite your data.
Start the program and choose the formatted drive for analysis. You can often customize the scans to reduce the amount of time it takes only searching for specific file types/sizes. When the results are displayed back to you, review the list of files and copy whichever ones you need onto a separate hard drive.
The ability to do a successful data recovery after format decreases over time since running applications and storing data gradually overwrites your original documents. Best results are achieved soon after formatting.
You should also note that formatting a drive and using data cleansing sweep of the disk repeatedly overwrite data clusters with random data. Recovery tools will struggle to find any data if this has happened. Data recovery experts may however still be able to find some fragments using their advanced forensic software.
Lastly, data recovery tools process data clusters using different algorithms to consolidate them into recognizable files. Therefore, try different tools if your first application fails to find the documents you want as each program could potentially return a different subset of documents.
