How to recover data from formatted HDD?

[Turgineer]

Hello, 6 years ago, my laptop computer gave a blue screen due to a hardware reason, and the computer repairman we sent to fix it formatted it(He was a terrible mechanic computer repairmen). The pictures on the hard disk were also gone, but we never used the computer again because the format did not work. So, no new data was written on the disk, except for Windows 10.

 

I want to recover the data by removing this disk from my old laptop and inserting it into my desktop computer, but I don't know how to do it. What is the best way to recover data? I want to save as many images as possible.

[Applefreak]

8 minutes ago, Turgineer said:

Hello, 6 years ago, my laptop computer gave a blue screen due to a hardware reason, and the computer repairman we sent to fix it formatted it(He was a terrible mechanic computer repairmen). The pictures on the hard disk were also gone, but we never used the computer again because the format did not work. So, no new data was written on the disk, except for Windows 10.

 

I want to recover the data by removing this disk from my old laptop and inserting it into my desktop computer, but I don't know how to do it. What is the best way to recover data? I want to save as many images as possible.

Probably impossible to get it back at least working that is. You can try free data recovery tools but there are 3 problems you have already mentioned. 1.) The drive was formatted. While a quick erase would only mark files and folders to be overwritten in the future, a full format would overwrite everything at least once, which makes is pretty hard to get complex data such as images back intact. 2.) You have installed windows onto the drive, so you have already written over data a second time. 3.) If the drive was unplugged for several years there is a good chance the data on it degraded even more. Magnetic drives need to be activated every once in a while to keep everything alive. Given the above mentioned points I see very little chance in getting your old data back. Still you can try but you will need to have enough storage on your computers drive for a complete copy of the old HDD.

[Turgineer]

5 minutes ago, Applefreak said:

You can try free data recovery tools but there are 3 problems you have already mentioned. 1.) The drive was formatted. While a quick erase would only mark files and folders to be overwritten in the future, a full format would overwrite everything at least once, which makes is pretty hard to get complex data such as images back intact. 2.) You have installed windows onto the drive, so you have already written over data a second time. 3.) If the drive was unplugged for several years there is a good chance the data on it degraded even more. Magnetic drives need to be activated every once in a while to keep everything alive. Given the above mentioned points I see very little chance in getting your old data back. Still you can try but you will need to have enough storage on your computers drive for a complete copy of the old HDD.

Well, it's still worth trying my luck. Which program do you recommend to recover data?

[Applefreak]

4 minutes ago, Turgineer said:

Well, it's still worth trying my luck. Which program do you recommend to recover data?

There is an open source (free) program called TestDisk that comes with a companion app called photorec for recovering images. Link here It's free, just unzip and go. You may want to execute with admin privileges. The program has a GUI (graphical user interface) as well as CMD console interface. Both work great, I tend to use the console interface more but that is personal choice. It is quite important that you do not boot the HDD, instead you want it connected to an existing machine as a secondary etc. drive. 

[ChrisLoudon]

27 minutes ago, Turgineer said:

Well, it's still worth trying my luck. Which program do you recommend to recover data?

Been a while since I've used anything like that but from memory I used a program called OnTrack Easy Recovery and had pretty good result. Can't remember if it was free or not though.

 

I should also point out that you will have better than average luck if its a good old fashioned spinning hard disk as your data is still on the platter until its overwritten.

 

SSDs on the other hand are nigh on impossible to get stuff off unless you want to pay a specialist to do it.

 

You should also be aware that if the drive was encrypted with Bitlocker, your data will be encrypted. Not 100% sure on how to get that decrypted so might want to check that as well.

[Mojo-Jojo]

I've had good results with Recuva - Its free version has no restrictions IIRC. From the same company as CCleaner.

[kokosnh]

All the overwritten data by new Windows is gone, the trasy is just up to luck, if there are some photos that wasn't in the beginning of partition.

and do remember, always send empty drive to repair ( the data should be backup up, and cleaned )
 

i would try to run it through easeUS data recovery free, you can get backup up to 1/2GB of data, and easy see if there is anything there,

[Turgineer]

On 9/8/2023 at 4:56 PM, ChrisLoudon said:

I should also point out that you will have better than average luck if its a good old fashioned spinning hard disk as your data is still on the platter until its overwritten.

Yeah, it was a HDD.