@Spildit
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1 - Consider the use of a professional data recovery service or at least something like this : -
https://www.ebay.com/itm/Logical-Data-R ... 3016948382 .
Is this someone or some business that is known to be legitimate / trustable, or just some random ad on Ebay ? It could be totally serious and trustworthy, but it seems a bit weird as a way of advertising that kind of service.
For the thread's author :
7) Even if the drive has no hardware issue (check the SMART status), doing a full clone or image prior to any recovery attempt is a wise safety measure.
As for 4) :
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4 - REMOVE the drive from the computer and plug it to a DESKTOP with a OS and logical data recovery tools already installed. From there run a full scan on the drive for lost data in "raw recovery" mode as well as try to gather remains of the old file system and file allocation table to see if it's still possible to get file names and folder. Most likely it will not be possible but you should still be able to get some files back by content type (file signature).
Normally even after a complete Windows reinstall / recovery, most of the data
and metadata for user files are still intact (the new MFT area should be located at the same spot as the former one, and most of the Windows system files should be written / recorded where the former ones originally were, while the total volume of Windows files is at most equal to what it was, most likely less since it grows over time when updates are installed and temporary files are created and so on). A few years ago I purchased a used laptop computer, which had been supposedly wiped / restored to factory state, and just for fun I scanned the HDD with a data recovery software (most likely R-Studio and GetDataBack, I was comparing the two at the time) : almost all the former user data was still there, with the directory structure, file names and whatnot.
But things don't always happen normally in this world where Murphy's Law is almost as unavoidable as the laws of physics. I hope that you don't end up with that kind of mess... é_è
https://forum.hddguru.com/viewtopic.php?f=1&t=36574https://superuser.com/questions/1309727 ... -encryptedhttps://forum.hddguru.com/viewtopic.php?f=1&t=37894