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Data recovery and disk repair questions and discussions related to old-fashioned SATA, SAS, SCSI, IDE, MFM hard drives - any type of storage device that has moving parts
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Recover Data from Formatted Hard Disk

March 11th, 2013, 16:12

Dear All – I am form Bangalore, India. I am desperately in need of your expert help. A terrible thing happened couple of days back and I am unable sleep since that heart breaking event happened. I am a not from technology background but I know quite a bit about technology due to personal interest in the subject.

I have a WD 2 TB USB 3.0 external hard disk (3.5 inch with external power) filled with 1700 GB of data. I used to keep all my family pics, family function videos, documents, music files etc in that drive and in many ways it’s my only source of data. Last Sunday morning, I wanted to copy a family function video from my hard disk to my pen drive (8 GB). The video file was close to 6 GB and when I try to copy the file to my pen drive, it displayed an error that the file is too large to copy. I was bit surprised as the pen drive was 8 GB (all free space) and its not allowing me to copy 6 GB file to it. Then suddenly I remembered reading somewhere that if the pen drive is in FAT 32 or some other format, it won’t allow me to copy any file more than 4 GB in size. I was not sure about it but I wanted to give it a try by changing the file system type and formatting the pen drive (Right click – Format – Quick Format –Ok). But then unfortunately, I formatted my 2 TB hard disk (Right Click – Format – File System (changed it to exFAT) – Quick Format – OK) thinking that I formatting my pen drive. What happened next is an absolute disaster – I lost my 4 years of personal data in 2 seconds.
I read somewhere that even when I do a Quick Format or Delete, the data still exists in the disk until I overwrite it with some other data. So far I haven’t copied anything to my 2 TB hard disk. Is there any way I can recover my lost data? I tried using Easus data recovery software but it’s not being able to detect the file system while trying to scan for all available files. Please help me I am unable to cope up with the pain of losing all my data from the past two days.

One last question, can I format my Hard Disk once more by changing the file system back to NTFS. Will the Easus Data Recovery Software work if I format my hard disk and change the file system to NTFS?

Please help, I am begging you all. You can reach me at ‘nekkantinaresh@gmail.com’

Re: Recover Data from Formatted Hard Disk

March 12th, 2013, 2:25

If you do not do anything else to this one you should be able to get your data back as RAW data and then you can rename all of your files. There is a lot of DR software out there to that can recover data from a drive. You can test them before buying them. I would suggest that you try a few of them and see which one gives you the best results and then purchase the code and recover your data. You will spend a long time to rename your files but at least you will have your data back. Good luck and hope you can find what you are looking for.

Re: Recover Data from Formatted Hard Disk

March 12th, 2013, 6:47

As long as the HDD is healthy and you make no more writes to it, there are multiple DR software titles that will help you. Your data still exists, but the table that catalogues it is gone. Recovery software will help you. But at any time if your not sure and due to the sentimental nature of the data you may want to consult a professional DR firm who can evaluate your case for free and give you a definitive answer as to what your options are

Re: Recover Data from Formatted Hard Disk

March 13th, 2013, 13:12

nekkantinaresh,
Maybe I can help you remotely repair the disk or files. You still need help ? Respond.

Re: Recover Data from Formatted Hard Disk

June 21st, 2013, 13:28

Thanks everyone a lot!! Really appreciate all your help
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