Can I recover files after a clean Windows reinstall?

After performing a reinstall of Windows, certain files from my computer should not have been deleted—it seems an error occurred. Is there any way at all to recover this data?

Yeah, I mean, how many we’ll actually end up using is really a whole different conversation, but I honestly think it’s an experiment worth running.

Jack Alvarez said:True—though how many people will actually end up using them is a different matter entirely... but it’s still worth a shot.

But how exactly? I know there are certain programs designed to perform a deep scan on a hard drive to recover data... but I'm curious about the specifics.

Give this a shot

https://www.piriform.com/recuva

Larry Ortiz5 said:Give this a shot...

https://www.piriform.com/recuva

I have tried—and for several of the files, it simply returns a "Bad status" error. Is there any way to actually recover those specific documents?...

When you're saving files to an HDD, it’s totally normal for them to get split up into different fragments, especially if they're larger than a few MB.
Once you go through with a clean reinstall of Windows, any data that was sitting where those new system files needed to land is gone for good. Even if it's just one tiny fragment of a file that got overwritten, the whole thing is toast. You'll just end up getting a "Bad status" error when you try to access them.

The real headache is just how much stuff has been overwritten with this new data, and while there might be a way to salvage some of those lost fragments, I'm thinking you probably don't have the specific gear or technical know-how needed to pull that off, so I'd honestly be perfectly fine with just accepting that we've lost a chunk of the data