Can the data be retrieved from a formatted hard disc?

Answer 1

It can but its very expensive and at best is a gamble that it hasnt been overwritten yet. About 80 bucks an hour to have a professional do it. Like I said tho, some files wont be recoverable.

Answer 2

Depends what you mean by 'can'.

If you formatted your disk drive and want stuff back, you can probably use a disk retrieval tool and a lot of effort to find files and fragments of files and put some of the information back together. You'll lose a lot... least with a quick format, more with a full format and even more if you then reinstalled stuff onto the disk.

I tried for a friend after they'd reinstalled the OS onto their disk following a well known PC shop's advice to fix a broken driver (just install the rescue diskette and reboot your PC...) and almost everything was lost to ordinary undeleter applications.

If you are concerned that someone else may retrieve information from a disk that you want to *stay* deleted, be aware that with enough money and enough time it is possible to retrieve almost all inofrmation from a disk that has been repeatedly totally overwritten. Writing binary '1' followed by binary '0' over all of a disk about 3 times makes it very very difficult to get anything back... format isn't anything like that good.

Hence why businesses are now shredding (physically destroying) disk drives containing sensitive information.

Answer 3

If a hard disk was just recently formatted you would be able to unformat the disk and probably retrieve all or some of the information.
Or there are programs were one could retrieve some of the info depending on what has been over written
If you are looking at the issue of security purposes, of selling a used computer and having some one gaining your personel info.
It is always best to totally wipe the disk with at minimum of government standards, or destroy the hard drive

Answer 4

It depends, if you did a quick format, then yes a lot of your files will probably be intact sitting on the drive. Some may have been ruined, especially ones that are closer to the front of the drive's data section. If you did a full or low-level format, then no, everything is completely erased. Warning: it's an expensive and complicated process to retrieve files from a hard drive that aren't referenced by the file system (i.e. 'deleted files').

Answer 5

It dipends form what kind of data you trying to get back. If you want to retrieve a document then it is posible. If it's a file, you would have less chance. Anyway give it a try, i recovered many files from different devices and saved so many lives. Here what i was using: Bad Copy v3.81 Recovery Wizard Pro v4.3.6 Seagate File Recovery v2.0 There are many other programs, but twose the ones that i used. Good luck

Answer 6

Yes.

It's just a matter of time and money.
There are software tools out there that perform recoveries off of formatted hard drives.

If you want to prevent anybody from recovering the data, you would write a bunch of nonsensical information, then delete the data.
The military or government writes data to the disk and deletes it several times.

Answer 7

If you have the right SOFTWARE the answer is YES...

Some of the retrieved items can be damaged and unable to be READ...

But you will be able to find bits and pieces depending on the condition of the drive and the type of FORMAT that was used.

You can always recover something.

Its not worth the hassle though.

Answer 8

for the most part, no. You can have a computer forensics professional scrub your hard drive, but he or she will find only pieces of information that were there and it wont be cheap. This practice is most common during law enforcement investigations.

Answer 9

If all its been is formatted once then yeah. You can unformat it or there some data retreival services you could go to...

Answer 10

no.