HELP FORMATTED C: DRIVE EVERYTHIG LOST

[Needing help]

My Wife formatted her C drive bymistake and inturn lost all our
movies.pic.music and who knows what else. I now have a C drive with part of
windows she loaded. Thankfully she stopped at product key (She was confused)
No I need to now how to get all or most of the data back. Please help me.

 

[Bruce Chambers]

My Wife formatted her C drive bymistake and inturn lost all our
movies.pic.music and who knows what else. I now have a C drive with part of
windows she loaded. Thankfully she stopped at product key (She was confused)
No I need to now how to get all or most of the data back. Please help me.

If the hard drive was formatted, then there is very probably no getting
the files back, short of contracting with a profession data recovery
service. If you immediately stop using that hard drive, remove it from
the computer, and slave it into another computer with data recovery
software installed, you might be able to recover something, but
certainly not every thing; some data will likely have been over-written
by the aborted installation.

http://www.google.com/search?q=data...s=org.mozilla:en-US:official&client=firefox-a

Professional data recovery services usually charge a flat "diagnostic"
fee of a couple hundred dollars to determine if anything can be
recovered, and then a variable charge (starting at @ $1200.00 the least
time I checked) depending upon the amount of data, the file system, and
the difficulty of the recovery.

http://www.google.com/search?q=data...s=org.mozilla:en-US:official&client=firefox-a

--

Bruce Chambers

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[Dragomir Kollaric]

My Wife formatted her C drive bymistake and inturn lost all our
movies.pic.music and who knows what else. I now have a C drive with part of
windows she loaded. Thankfully she stopped at product key (She was confused)
No I need to now how to get all or most of the data back. Please help me.

Give your wife a *limited* user account so that she can't
*format* any drive in the future even if it's her own
PC/Laptop.


Get into the habit of backing up DATA *NOT* on drive C but
on other drives (extern f.e.)



Dragomir Kollaric[/QUOTE]

 

[philo]

me.

Give your wife a *limited* user account so that she can't
*format* any drive in the future even if it's her own
PC/Laptop.


Get into the habit of backing up DATA *NOT* on drive C but
on other drives (extern f.e.)

Having a limited account does not prevent one from booting
with the XP cd and formatting the drive.
One cannot format the system drive from within the OS anyway!

The data recovery suggestion was a good one...
and external backups are *essential* !

 

[Mike Hall - MVP]

My Wife formatted her C drive bymistake and inturn lost all our
movies.pic.music and who knows what else. I now have a C drive with part
of
windows she loaded. Thankfully she stopped at product key (She was
confused)
No I need to now how to get all or most of the data back. Please help me.

'Stopped at the product key' could be changed to 'stopped at midnight'. The
damage has been done.

You can try using something like File Inspector, a free file recovery
program, but don't expect too much. Pictures recover better than music, but
there will be a substantial amount gone for ever.

The drive will need to be placed in another computer, and File Inspector
should NOT be installed on the target drive, as it could overwrite even more
files.

Professional file recovery is expensive as in $$$$$, and can't be 100%
guaranteed either.

To save this scenario happening again, when the computer is up and running
again, change the boot order, demoting the CD/DVD drive to a lower position
than the hard drive. At least there will be no way to boot to a Windows CD
unless a concerted effort is made..

--
Mike Hall - MVP
How to construct a good post..
http://dts-l.com/goodpost.htm
How to use the Microsoft Product Support Newsgroups..
http://support.microsoft.com/default.aspx?pr=newswhelp&style=toc
Mike's Window - My Blog..
http://msmvps.com/blogs/mikehall/default.aspx

 

[Peter Foldes]

You make no sense. If she formatted the computer by mistake then why did she stop where the input of the product key goes.
She would have had to notice with all the warnings supplied by XP that she was erasing and re-installing the OS.

 

[Dragomir Kollaric]

Having a limited account does not prevent one from booting
with the XP cd and formatting the drive.

You mean one could boot the CD *by mistake* tell it to
format drive C as the OP claimed, his wife did this by
mistake, I wonder if she could even get that far? Unless it
became a lot easier to install winXP then win95 the last M$
product I ever used...

One cannot format the system drive from within the OS anyway!

The data recovery suggestion was a good one...
and external backups are *essential* !

Dragomir Kollaric[/QUOTE]

 

[smlunatick]

You  mean one  could boot  the CD  *by mistake*  tell it  to
format  drive C  as the  OP claimed,  his wife  did this  by
mistake, I wonder if she could  even get that far? Unless it
became a lot easier to install  winXP then win95 the last M$
product I ever used...



Dragomir Kollaric  

With Windows XP, just by booting a PC with the install CD and
answering the simple questions, the first hard drive found (C will
be "formatted" and have XP installed. Its even simplier if they have
a Recovery CD install media. This does not ask any questions and just
"restores" the factory install "image" ontop of drive C:

 

[Jason]

Changing the boot order this way would mean you would only boot to CD if the
hard drive is not bootable which would solve the problem and not preventing
installing to a fresh hard drive. Also a confident person can then change
the boot order back temporarily if there was any need to boot of CD in the
future.