darkowl72 said:The more you mess around with different software on that drive, the lower your chances of actually getting anything back. If those files are truly critical, I’d suggest reaching out to a pro here: http://www.infolab.com/pricing
Prices have become much more reasonable lately; they aren't astronomical anymore...
In practical terms, recovery programs won't do any damage, provided the physical hardware of the disk is still functioning correctly.😁
The absolute golden rule is simply this: "never write any new data to a formatted drive." Once you overwrite old data with new files, you've hit a wall, and recovering anything becomes a massive uphill battle.
Regarding that formatting issue, it was almost certainly just a Quick Format, which doesn't actually wipe the data from the disk. The information is still sitting there; you just need to pull it off using a solid recovery tool. If the data is vital and the software fails to find everything, that's when you take it to Infolab to have them dig out the remaining pieces.
If a user is inexperienced, dealing with high-stakes data, or just struggles with Windows and various recovery utilities, it's probably smarter to contact Infolab right away. Someone mentioned Recuva, which is fine, but there isn't much point in using it when there's a far superior and more feature-rich tool available. That specific program is
MiniTool Power Data Recovery 6.5; it's an older version, but it's completely free and unrestricted, so it works without any hassle.🍿
http://www.bug.com/forum/topic/other...=asc&view=flat
