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Accidental Low-Level Format!!!

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Hello everybody,

Although I am afraid that I alrady know the answer to this one, my friend David accidently low-level formatted his hard-drive. Would you guys happen to know of any way to recover the data? The drive was running NTFS 5. I understand that I can take it to a company to get it recovered, but the data is not worth the price. Any help would be great!!!

13 replies

by r. a. caluste

a modern drive's low level format is actually a format with a zero-fill feature which means the program wipes off all data on the drive by filling the sectors with zeroes. i am afraid you cannot recover any lost data.

allan

by dmiles

Low-level format will wipe all data from the drive since it is meant to start at 0,so recovery from a low-level format cannot be possible

by fenaikh

Hi
Before given up i would try easyrecovery.

the Trial edition which is FREE it will show only files which you could recoveer by the license one.

Good luck

Mohamed

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by daya_hs

if your desire is to protect data. then take out your hard disk, attach to some other computer and copy all the important file of it. you can copy your files using the network also it is provided.
then you reattach your hdd to your computer. don'tgo for low-level format. Remove the partitions using fdisk in case of win95/98. of got disk administrator in case of winnt/win2000. after removing the partition create the partitions freshly and format it. initially create primary partition and thenextended dos with logical drives. install the os and other related software which you want to work on. your problem is solved.
later copy your files from another computer attaching your hdd or using network.

by thechas

I guess it depens on how valuable the data is.

Suppossedly, some of the data recovery firms can recover data from nearly any drive that has had data on it.

This service costs big bucks!!

But, this is why many security experts recommend melting down drives with sensative information on them, as it is possible to recover some info from most any drive with enough time and the correct tools.

Chas

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