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  • September 5, 2020 at 10:24 am #2141782

    External storage data deleted

    by nelol · about 4 years, 1 month ago

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    I had data on my external drive but it got deleted when I installed windows on it. Then I also converted it to GPT because it wasn’t showing full capacity, so it deleted everything on it. and then, I used it again a few times to move files back and forth. Is there any way to get the data I had on it before I installed Windows? 🙁
    Thanks!

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    • September 14, 2020 at 1:08 am #2419418

      Probably not now

      by oh smeg · about 4 years ago

      In reply to External storage data deleted

      Well at least not cheaply and easily as anything on the drive has been overwritten on the Windows Format and Load, then again on the Reformat/resize and finally when you copped data to the drive.

      But on the bright side Yes it may be possible to recover the data if you want to spend the money and it will cost you that HDD as well because they need to pull it apart and coat the platter so they can do a Bit By Bit recovery.

      On Track can do this but it’s VERY EXPENSIVE and you would need to talk to them about the cost however I have only heard of this method being used to recover data off Hard Drives by Government Departments where the cost of the recovery is far less than doing whatever it was that made the data in the first place. The most common things are a Drive sent to space and damaged somehow that was recording an experiment not being readable it is far cheaper to try this type of recovery and throw up to 1 Million at the Data Recovery House than repeat the experiment which would have cost in the tens or higher of Millions.

      You also need to understand that any data on a HDD IS NOT PERMANENT it is less permanent on recorded Discs like DVD or CD and even less likely to be there a long time from now on a USB/Firewire Flash Drive.

      If there is data you want to keep you need to BACKUP several times and constantly check the backup’s to make sure they are still readable then rotate those backup’s so you do not write over a drive that has failed or whatever you are using as a Backup Utility doesn’t work or worse still you change OS’s and the new OS can not read the old Backup Media.

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