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Software to recover files after formatting drive?

B

bczoom

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My son trashed one of his external hard drives. Couldn't be recognized in windows, had no file system... but I could get to it in Windows Drive Manager.

I ended up tinkering with it and got it readable and recognizable in Windows again but had to format it to get a file system installed (NTFS).

What process or software do you recommend for me to try and get all his files back? There seems to be a lot of products but not sure if all are created equal.

TIA
 
Any chance some of his files are on the local drive of the computer he was using? If editing a word doc or spreadsheet many times temp files are saved on the local drive, try opening recent files (which should show up automatically when you click open).

If you did a quick format you might be able to recover some but the first letter of the file name will be gone ...if you did a full format that would wipe the drive. Hard to recover after that.
We all learn this lesson about saving backup copies of our files, usually learn it the hard way, by losing files. :bonk:

I have not tried to recover files on windows since the DOS days. Can't even remember the name of the tool that was a staple in my tool box then. PK something I think, but that would not work with NTFS.

So I got a couple links for ya.

https://www.pcworld.com/article/2147668/how-to-recover-deleted-files.html

This one has a free download along with an upgrade to pro option. Software for Apple and Windows.
https://www.cleverfiles.com/disk-drill-windows.html

Good luck.
 
Well, I tried the product in Doc's first link. It didn't find anything to recover. The 2nd link says "free up to 500M". Well, this is closer to 500G so I didn't bother to try the product.

These files aren't on his C drive. They're game files, nothing really important but they're big which is why they're on the external drive. His C drive filled up so I have him use this drive.

He'll just have to download them again. We get 1 terabytes per month so he'll be able to download them again without much effort or delay.
He can get these files again
 
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