Reformatted Hard Drive

[Paul]

Can anyone help? I have just bought a new hard drive for
additional storage & after hours of installation problems,
decided to reformat it & start again. To my horror, I now
discover that I formatted the wrong drive & wiped all my
downloads & personal files. I undderstand that the data
can still be retrieved but how do you do it? All URGENT
replies would be gratefully received!!!!!

 

[Chris Lanier]

Still little hope, unless you have a lot of money to spend to get it back.
Many programs/services will do it, take a quick look at a search
http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&ie=UTF-8&oe=UTF-8&q=recover+data

 

[rifleman]

Paul cogitated deeply and scribbled thusly:

Can anyone help? I have just bought a new hard drive for
additional storage & after hours of installation problems,
decided to reformat it & start again. To my horror, I now
discover that I formatted the wrong drive & wiped all my
downloads & personal files. I undderstand that the data
can still be retrieved but how do you do it? All URGENT
replies would be gratefully received!!!!!

if you have re-formatted, VERY difficult and VERY expensive AFAIK. Sorry.

 

[Guest]

I hear this one can ????

http://www.quetek.com/prod02.htm

 

[Patrick Keenan]

Can anyone help? I have just bought a new hard drive for
additional storage & after hours of installation problems,
decided to reformat it & start again. To my horror, I now
discover that I formatted the wrong drive & wiped all my
downloads & personal files. I undderstand that the data
can still be retrieved but how do you do it? All URGENT
replies would be gratefully received!!!!!

Do not use the machine for anythign else. Remove the drive and re-install
it as a slave drive, and then run a utility like Ontracks's Easy Recovery
Pro. This isn't cheap but can work well, as long as the partition tables
haven't been modified and nothing else has been written to disk. They do
have a demo that will show you what it can recover. It won't actually
recover anything, but will give you a good idea of where you stand.

http://www.ontrack.com/software/

HTH
-pk

 

[Jake]

-----Original Message-----
Can anyone help? I have just bought a new hard drive for
additional storage & after hours of installation problems,
decided to reformat it & start again. To my horror, I now
discover that I formatted the wrong drive & wiped all my
downloads & personal files. I undderstand that the data
can still be retrieved but how do you do it? All URGENT
replies would be gratefully received!!!!!
.

Download the below Restore program on a friend's computer
to a floppy disk, it is very small. Boot your PC to the
SAFE mode. If that doesn't work, try your WinXP
installation disk, it is bootable. Then insert the
floppy and run the restore program on "A" drive. It may
find most of your files to restore them, at least enough
to run XP. As long as you have not messed around with it.
Restorer (Rest2514.exe)
http://www.kellys-korner-xp.com/regs_edits/REST2514.EXE
Or,
Boot to Safe mode. As soon as you turn your PC on and
start clicking the F8 key, that should get you there.
Best wishes. You can also format your harddrive and do a
new install of XP with your installation disk. Use the
below website for help:
Ranish Partition Manager v2.44 Beta
http://www.pcworld.com/downloads/file_download/0,fid,6170,
fileidx,1,00.asp
If none of the above work for you, read at the below
website for additional help. Good luck:
http://www.webtree.ca/windowsxp/repair_xp.htm

 

[Malke]

I hear this one can ????

http://www.quetek.com/prod02.htm

www.drivesavers.com. Not cheap, but only you can decide if $500+ is
worth spending to retrieve your data.

Malke

 

[Michal Kawecki]

Can anyone help? I have just bought a new hard drive for
additional storage & after hours of installation problems,
decided to reformat it & start again. To my horror, I now
discover that I formatted the wrong drive & wiped all my
downloads & personal files. I undderstand that the data
can still be retrieved but how do you do it? All URGENT
replies would be gratefully received!!!!!

This utility is free - I used it many times with success: PC Inspector
File Recovery http://www.convar.de. But if you formatted this drive with
fdisk.exe, your data is probably lost.

 

[Michal Kawecki]

This utility is free - I used it many times with success: PC Inspector
File Recovery http://www.convar.de. But if you formatted this drive
with fdisk.exe, your data is probably lost.

Sorry - forget this mention about fdisk. Fdisk can destroy your data
only when you delete partitions with it, it cannot format anything of
course ;-). This behaviour of fdisk is described for ex. here:
http://www.z-a-recovery.com/faq.htm