ACCIDENTAL FORMAT

  • Thread starter Thread starter Jan Alter
  • Start date Start date
J

Jan Alter

--
Jan Alter
(e-mail address removed)

Chris Hill said:
Recover my files or similar program. Free to try, pay if it looks
like it found your stuff. It won't all come back in a neat order, but
if it wasn't over-written, it is all still there.
Click to expand...


There's a pretty good chance you'll be able to recover your files and I hope
you can.

This exact scenerio happened to me a couple of years ago. It made me start
to remember to always disconnect external drives from the computer before
beginning to format C: This type of event starts to make one reconsider
having not one backup but two of everything on your main hdd and even
storing the second backup off site.
 
This is what happened ....
First this is an external usb hard drive. This drive had many pictures
and videos almost 120 GB worth of files. Do I want them yes badly real
badly. Now all I can say is this... I really dont know what
happened.... As I said this is an external usb drive. I was
reinstalling XP on my pc from scratch and I of course did not mind
formatting the C drive as that was my intention anyway but NOT the
data external drive. So I tried to install windows and it looked like
things were going ok but I must have made a mistake or something
because during the install I got a blue screen and had to start over
well anyway after getting it working and installed I noticed that my
external data drive (I have 2 of them) was almost completely empty.
The other external drive had disapeared from the system. So one was
missing and the other one well was basically empty and what it did
have on it was just a windows directory. So this is where I am now. I
was able to turn the other external drive off and on and then
everything is OK with that one. I can see all my files perfectly.
However the drive that I am really looking for simply has a windows
directory in it and approx 114 GB of free space on it. I am terrified.
I think I lost all that precious data. I dont know exactly how it
happened but is there anything that can resolve this dilemma?
Thanks for any help you can provide.
 
Recover my files or similar program. Free to try, pay if it looks
like it found your stuff. It won't all come back in a neat order, but
if it wasn't over-written, it is all still there.
Click to expand...

I am trying that now. Hopefully I am successful it does take some
time. I will let you guys know one way or the other.

Thanks
 
S-D> I am trying that now. Hopefully I am successful it does take
S-D> some time. I will let you guys know one way or the other.

Geez. If these files are as important as you say, I would send them
to a professional file recovery service.
Click to expand...

My experience is that it's never so much that things get lost, but
you aren't sure what was on that. A lot of it won't be important,
because you can retrieve it from somewhere, and some of it won't
be important because it's completely trivial, and a little bit
will be something you regret losing.

But the minute something gets mangled, you no longer remember
what's what. And that nags at you.

If you know what's there, then you can more easily write it off. But
if you can't remember what's on there, it's more of a mystery.

Michael
 
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