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I have just installed a fresh copy of Windows as my previous version was corrupted. My drive C was formatted whereas my other drives are still there. I want to get some of my files back from my drive C. Is there any possible way to do this, such as with file recovery software like Remo Recover?

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  • I used the trial version for Data Recovery Wizard Professional v3.3.4 and it restored ALL of my documents by doing a filter search for documents (.pdf,.doc, .xls etc) and I recommend it to everyone.
    – Alex Zahir
    Oct 19, 2012 at 16:37
  • Glad it worked out for you, but you may not be that lucky again in the future. Maybe you learned a lesson about making sure you back up (or at least copy out) important data before formatting your drive. :-)
    – Ken White
    Oct 19, 2012 at 16:47

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Well from their page I would say it is worth a shot, however it depends greatly on how the drive was formatted I would presume.

If a real format was completed then the drive was wiped completely. If a partial format was completed then the allocation table was wiped and there is a potential that Remo could find something.

At this point I would say you have a 50/50 shot.

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    No. Formats never wipe the drive. They just re-write the drive's "index". You need special tools to wipe a drive. The largest problem is data being overwritten by the install, not data being wiped.
    – Bart Friederichs
    Oct 19, 2012 at 14:23
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    @Bart: Quick formats just rewrite the MFT (drive's "index"). A full format will affect most sectors, although it doesn't overwrite every single one, which is why some (but seldom all) data can be recovered. See this article, in particular the second paragraph.
    – Ken White
    Oct 19, 2012 at 14:29
  • agreed, wiped is a bad choice of words.
    – Pow-Ian
    Oct 19, 2012 at 14:31
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files that were not overwritten by your OS install MAY be recoverable. in this case look at this document explaining TestDisk and Photorec. I usually use Ubuntu Rescue Remix for data recovery tasks, but there are many live CDs available with these two tools. PhotoRec is probably your best bet since you've already overwritten a good portion of your old partition.

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  • I still have my Time Machine backups on an external drive, so nothing has been lost per se, I just want to log onto my now-restored system.
    – Edward Falk
    Apr 10, 2015 at 22:19

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