Hi. I really need some advice. When i turned on my computer today, it would not run windows. So, i had to put in the setup cd and it re-installed xp onto my machine. However, now that i am back on, all of my hardrive has been wiped and i have no back-up. If anyone can help me or tell me how to recover my data, it would be greatly appreciated. Jason
since you did a clean install of windows, its unlikely that you could recover any important files had, but might be able to recover some files. I'd suggest you use [google]undelete[/google] but its costs or maybe you can try a search on google for [google]freeware undelete program[/google].
Thanks for the reply. i downloaded a free version of undelete, but it doesn't look like it can recover my files. would you recommend the hardrive recovery companys where you physically send them your hardrive?
I would suggest against it as it can cost thousands to recover data from these companies. You have learned a simple lesson here Backup your data
what sort of vital data did you have?? i dont recommend data recovery and chance are that not all will be recovered anyway. sorry m8 Dave
If the disk was completely formatted, I'd have said it was impossible to recover.. The whole data recovery process baffles me - surely if its been shredded into cyber space, and the disk space used has been gained again, it is as if it never existed? So for recovery programs to work, there must be a trace of the information lost, but in which case the format did nothing, and therefore was pointless.
When you delete a file on your HD, the file system doesn't actually overwrite the data. It marks the sectors on which the data is held as empty. When space is needed data is just overwritten on the sectors and the previous data destroyed. I'm not sure this with newer file systems.
but when you format.... think of the end of the world (in your hard drive) its like either reli costly or freakin hard to get those files back
Stellar Phoenix does a great job for me...I can format a drive (wasn't my primary) with windows 2k on it then restore everything and I had no problems...it even booted to 2k fine.
