Accidental file deletion or formatting hard drives does not necessarily mean your lost files are irretrievable. This article shows how to recover formatted files using free applications, along with the 3 factors affecting a complete file recovery.
Formatted data recovery is one of the easiest home PC repair tasks that you can attempt for yourself. This is due to the fact that formatted data never wiped clear off the disk and can be easily found using software.
Freeware recovery programs such as Undelete Plus and PhotoRec can recover formatted files in just a few simple stages:
- Install and run the recovery software.
- You are asked to pick a drive to scan. Select the formatted drive.
- The program will scan the disk for lost data clusters (how files are stored in memory) and consolidate them into documents that you will recognize.
- You then pick the files you need from the found documents list and copy them to a new directory. You will notice a lot of temporary files and system files in the found documents list so it may take a while to find your document.
The process itself is straight forward but can be affected by three principal factors:
- If the formatting process included a data cleansing pass (or passes) then this will have overwritten your original data which will be lost for good.
- Any use of the drive after it was formatted for saving files will gradually cause the original files to be overwritten by new files.
- Each data recovery software program analyzes the dispersed data clusters differently so you may find each tool returns slightly different lists of found files, some of which will not included the documents you are looking for. Your best bet is to try a number of freeware tools until you find your files.
Software will recover formatted files to varying degrees of success so really shouldn’t be depended upon. Instead, simply burning backup copies of your data (e.g. to CD) is a much better approach to consider.