How can you carry out formatted hard drive recovery?

How to recover formatted hard drive?

Is formatted hard drive recovery possible – this is a question you may often hear from computer users. Today in this article I am going to show how to recover formatted hard drive in a few simple steps.

There is no need to panic if you have accidentally formatted your hard disk containing important files and data without backup. With the help of the right tools you still have chances to recover data from formatted hard drive, either yourself or by a professional data recovery company that can help you to recover most, if not all, of the erased data on the disk.

Why formatting the hard drive may be necessary?

It may be necessary to format your drive if your computer fails to boot, your computer runs unusually slow, you are to upgrade your operating system, or your computer’s hard drive becomes full. Different operating systems require different file systems. So formatting may also be needed to convert file systems from NTFS to FAT. Formatting of a hard drive is also done to prepare the drive so that your computer can recognize it for eventual storage of user data.

Formatting your hard drive puts the drive back to its original status. This is done by removing all programs and deleting all the existing data on your computer to rebuild the file system. Hence, if you decide to format your hard drive, it is highly suggested to back up the drive data before formatting which will make data recovery much easier later.

Practicability to recover formatted hard drive

Let us now look into the practicability to recover a formatted hard drive.

While formatting, the operating system checks the disk for the reliability of the chances of recovery, marks bad sectors, and creates a new directory structure, or internal ‘address table’ onto the disk for use at a later date to locate information on the disk. During the formatting process most of the files on the disk except for the data on the ‘address table’, remain untouched and no data on the disk actually gets erased. They just don’t become visible as they are no longer part of the directory structure. This offers a good chance to recover formatted hard drive/disk with apparently lost data using a good data recovery program. But one point to remember, once your formatted partition is overwritten by new content, you will lose the chance to restore your vital data, files, or photos back from the formatted drive.

How to recover formatted hard drive – steps to follow

You may try out a very simple yet effective data recovery software namely Disk Drill, which once saved my day from a hopeless situation when I accidentally formatted the wrong drive on my computer.

Disk Drill data recovery software is a reliable and user-friendly program that can recover several kinds of drives and file types. Unless there is physical damage to sectors on your drive, Disk Drill can recognize and recover files in over 400 different file formats. It runs on a freemium model, letting you restore up to 500 MB of data for free.

The step-by-step guide given below will show you how to recover data from formatted hard drive with the help of this data recovery software in a few simple steps.

Before you can begin, there are a few basics you need to follow:

1.  Do a backup before you try the formatted hard drive recovery;

2. Don’t install the software on the drive where you lost your data to keep your data protected from overwriting;

3. Ensure to save the recovered files& data to a place other than the formatted drive to avoid overwriting of original data;

Here’re the steps to follow on how to recover formatted hard drive with ‘Disk Drill’ software:

Step-1: Download and install the free version of Disk Drill  for Windows on your computer;

Step-2: Launch the program after installation;

Step-3:  Connect the formatted hard drive to your machine;

Step-4: From the displayed drives select the disk or partition from which you need to recover deleted files and click the “Search for Lost Data” button to initiate the scanning process;

Step-5: Disk Drill shall now list the recoverable files and folders for your review. Select the ones that you want to recover;

Step-6: Click the ‘Recover’ button and select a new location for the restored files. As mentioned earlier, do not use the original disk to save the recovered data;

Step-7: Finally, save the recovered formatted files at your desired location;

You may also like to read this related article: Recover Overwritten Files – an easy step by step guide

Frequently asked questions

Now that you know how to recover files from formatted hard drive let me also address some of the frequently asked related questions:

Can a formatted hard disk be recovered?

Since formatting a disk does not erase the real data, it is possible to recover formatted hard drive data by using a reliable hard drive recovery program.

Can you retrieve files deleted from recycle bin?

Yes, you can. To recover deleted files from the Recycle Bin without software follow the steps below:

1. Search by typing ‘restore file’ in the search box present on the Taskbar;

2.  Select ‘Restore your files with File History’;

3. Look for the file you wish to restore on the File History window;

4. After finding the correct version, select Restore;

How can I recover permanently deleted files in Windows 10 without software?

You can restore permanently deleted files in Windows 10 from a File History Backup without software. To do this follow the steps below:

1. Type ‘restore files’ on the search box in the taskbar and press ‘Enter’ on your keyboard;

2. Look for the folder where the deleted files were stored;

3. After locating the folder select the ‘Restore’ button to undelete Windows 10 files to their original location;

You may also like to read this related post: How to recover data from dead hard drive

Conclusion

Now that I have shown how to recover data from formatted hard drive, here is a piece of advice to avoid a distressing situation as a result of unforeseen loss of precious data from your hard drive.

While it is true that you can safely recover formatted hard drive with all your apparently lost data on it with the help of the right formatted hard drive recovery software as mentioned in this post, it is better to be able to get the data back quickly than have to go through these lot of extra things every time a drive crashes or gets formatted mistakenly. Therefore, in my opinion, the best data recovery solution is one that you can carry out on your own, which is data backup. Backing up important files on a regular basis could be a lifesaver in case of data loss due to unforeseen eventualities.