Quick Format Assists Data Recovery?

[fzabkar]

http://forums.seagate.com/t5/Barracuda- ... 071#M31543

The user asks ...

"I have two Seagate Barracuda 500GB SATA 7200rpm drives, full of data,  that I used for storage only, and they are no longer recognized by Windows or Ubuntu.  One day they just didn't get assigned a drive letter, first one then the other few months later.  They are formatted to FAT32." 

The SeaGuru responds ...

"... if you do a quick format you will lose some data but most of it should be intact still, you can then use something like Recuva to scan the drives and recover ..."

[shahij]

I doubt it is real "SeaGuru"!!! Minimum info missing in his brain............

[mr_spokk]

"SeaGuru" *LOL*
He suggest the user to do a quick reformat just to get the driveletter and from there work with recover the data, and say that "you will lose some data"...what a joke!

Hopefully the user did not listen to him...

[BlackST]

Instead of starting cross-forum flaming wars, consider there is a grain of salt in the idea, possibly if it wasn't a FAT32 case AND assuming there is no other issue : putting myself for a nanosecond on the other side of the barricade ( = without all stuff, knowhow , software and HW tools) , when "sometimes" you get partially FS fucked up in a certain way so the common FREE stuff hangs or give bad results, "quick formatting" the partition give better results with the same free stuff. Of course you have to be careful and need to know for sure what exactly is the problem , would be better to work on a clone.

Same happens in particular circumstances when you CANNOT get rid easily of damaged FS structure so you cannot delete folders / files or add folders.
In seconds , instead of hours and a lot of attempts, you can then use something to try recovering data.

Quick formatting is not a capital sin if you have little or nothing to loose and you have only limited resources / cannot afford even a single license of advanced recovery software.

[Tawfeek]

Instead of starting cross-forum flaming wars, consider there is a grain of salt in the idea, possibly if it wasn't a FAT32 case AND assuming there is no other issue : putting myself for a nanosecond on the other side of the barricade ( = without all stuff, knowhow , software and HW tools) , when "sometimes" you get partially FS fucked up in a certain way so the common FREE stuff hangs or give bad results, "quick formatting" the partition give better results with the same free stuff. Of course you have to be careful and need to know for sure what exactly is the problem , would be better to work on a clone.

Same happens in particular circumstances when you CANNOT get rid easily of damaged FS structure so you cannot delete folders / files or add folders.
In seconds , instead of hours and a lot of attempts, you can then use something to try recovering data.

Quick formatting is not a capital sin if you have little or nothing to loose and you have only limited resources / cannot afford even a single license of advanced recovery software.

i like this . you are the sound of wisdom & professional reply in this topic .
my greetings

[BlackST]

Instead of starting cross-forum flaming wars, consider there is a grain of salt in the idea, possibly if it wasn't a FAT32 case AND assuming there is no other issue : putting myself for a nanosecond on the other side of the barricade ( = without all stuff, knowhow , software and HW tools) , when "sometimes" you get partially FS fucked up in a certain way so the common FREE stuff hangs or give bad results, "quick formatting" the partition give better results with the same free stuff. Of course you have to be careful and need to know for sure what exactly is the problem , would be better to work on a clone.

Same happens in particular circumstances when you CANNOT get rid easily of damaged FS structure so you cannot delete folders / files or add folders.
In seconds , instead of hours and a lot of attempts, you can then use something to try recovering data.

Quick formatting is not a capital sin if you have little or nothing to loose and you have only limited resources / cannot afford even a single license of advanced recovery software.

i like this . you are the sound of wisdom & professional reply in this topic .
my greetings

Thank you my friend. Much appreciated

[fzabkar]

I did not start this thread to kick the guy. I had previously explained to him that formatting was bad, particularly in respect of FAT32, and I explained to him in detail how it zeros the FATs and renders fragmented files difficult, if not impossible, to recover. I also contacted the moderator but he cited Seagate's non-intervention policy. Therefore I only posted here in desperation.

As for his advice, he does not know any different. Destroying the file system is his FIRST line of attack, reagardless of the user's problem. I have told him repeatedly that an examination of the problem should be the first thing one does before launching into all manner of point-and-click tools at the problem.

[fzabkar]

If the OP only have windows and if it's hanging due to the drive presence (windows trying to mount a damaged File Alocation Table or partition) then a quick format (or delete the partition like i've done in the past) might assist the op to get windows stable enought to run something like R-Studio on the damaged drive.

I understand that deleting the partition, or just editing its partition ID in the partition table, could circumvent some hanging issue, but a quick format would be totally unnecessary in such a case.

If you go back to the original post, the advice that was given was to do a quick format, then try Recuva.

[fzabkar]

@ fzabkar
A little bit off-topic but just out of curiosity, what tools are you using to deal with the firmware problems on drives ? Pc3k, Salvation, any other ?
Thanks.

None. I'm not a data recovery professional, and I have never pretended to be (I thought you knew that). I did once seriously think about it, though, but that was over 20 years ago.

Coincidentally, my second data recovery job was on a proprietary file system which looked a little like FAT. The file system had been initialised (aka reformatted), but since the OS did not allow files to be fragmented, the data were completely recoverable. BTW, there were no tools in those days other than a rudimentary sector editor, so I do have personal experience, at the byte level, that is closely related to the subject.