I recently screwed up my Vista partition and just installed another copy of Vista over it. I lost everything I had on my hard drive. I remember hearing somewhere that it might be possible to get data from a formatted drive. Does anyone know if there's any truth to this, and if there is, how would I go about doing it?

I suppose only if you were a hard drive expert that was trained to gather data from discs than yeah you (might) be able to get that data. But Usually when you install a new partition everything that was there before is now gone. That's why you should always back up before doing anything - If you had a recovery disc you probably could have saved your vista.

If fact, the vista installation disc offers a repair...I mean, if you corrupted the installation to the point you couldn't boot then most likely that info you had was gone before you even did the re-partition.

I suppose only if you were a hard drive expert that was trained to gather data from discs than yeah you (might) be able to get that data. But Usually when you install a new partition everything that was there before is now gone. That's why you should always back up before doing anything - If you had a recovery disc you probably could have saved your vista.

If fact, the vista installation disc offers a repair...I mean, if you corrupted the installation to the point you couldn't boot then most likely that info you had was gone before you even did the re-partition.

It is possible, in a way. Professional services, which are never totally guaranteed, can cost $100s or $1000s per GB.
But for DIY try this:

info:
http://www.cgsecurity.org/wiki/TestDisk
Program only:
http://www.cgsecurity.org/wiki/TestDisk_Download
Rescue Disk:
http://www.cgsecurity.org/wiki/TestDisk_Livecd

Id use the rescue disk if you havent reinstalled anything since it will load up a temporary OS to run the recovery tool.

Good Luck!

I'm not entirely sure how Vista reformats. I would think it would be the easy, quick manner. Removing file start blocks, and not zeroing out all the data. It's easy enough for programs to recover data from memory addresses that have not been written over. Certain System data is stored at particular memory addresses, so the vast majority of your reinstalled OS wouldn't overwrite personal data. You would probably have a 90% data recovery scenario.

It depends on a couple of things.

Yes there are programs and company that will recover your data but first check those questions.

Did you do a full format on your hard drive if so then everything was erased, if you did a quick one then only a very small portion was erased and you may still have data on your HD, you also have to remember that everytime new data is written (installing VISTA will be considered new data) your old data will be rewritten over and gone, so everytime you use your PC new data is written on your HD and the old one might be erase in the process.

You lost me at.... "Vista"

Before you try anything else get someone who has a copy of bootable Linux such as Knoppix on a CD. Boot your machine under Linux/Knoppix and you can copy any readable files onto a usb flashdrive. It may be too late for any files that were overwritten but you could recover stuff that was still left intact. Good luck.

Not sure if this will work or not, but it may be worth a try:
http://www.pandorarecovery.com/

There is a utility called 'foremost' which, if I understand correctly, ignores the existing structure on the drive and looks at the raw data on the drive for recognizable, recoverable files. If you run this utility on your drive, it will therefore 'find' all the files which already show up normally (all your new, reinstalled vista files) - but if any of your previous data survived being directly 'overwritten' during the install, it has a good chance of finding your files.

You may need a second drive for it to work on, so that it doesn't accidentally -overwrite- the files you are trying to recover as it generates its lists of recoverable files (and as it recovers them).

I used this once in an effort to undelete a friend's file - it failed to find that particular file, but it did find and recover many hundreds of files from previous years.

I don't think this is available under windows, I could be wrong, but you can follow slowhands advice and run this from a linux live CD (just choose the correct distribution that has foremost included in it).

If you are not already familiar with a command line environment, and if these files are VERY important to you, you might get someone to sit down with you, as it is easy to screw things up using a tool like this. (Of course, the worst that can happen you will just lose your data reinstall vista, which is about where you are right now.)

Here is a bit more info, enough to help you in further googling:

http://tombuntu.com/index.php/2008/04/09/recover-deleted-files-with-foremost/

Thanks for all the info everyone. I got a recovery program, and it's finding a lot of things, but the files I really wanted seem to be corrupted.

I agree.. definitely get yourself a copy of bootable linux CD such as Knoppix and mount your hard drive. Then save whatever you need to another CD/DVD or flashdrive.


If you want a small linux version to boot from try "Puppy Linux".

The whole operating system should load in RAM and you can then mount your hard drive, remove the bootable disk and start copying the files.

It's a very small learning curve and you'll be amazed at what you can do.




Good Luck!
Richie

Not to pile on here, but although you might be able to get at data that hasn't really been overwritten, and you might be able to even get at some that appears to be overwritten, you're not likely going to be able to piece much of this together.

Now if you have something that is of national security, I'm sure the government has the resources to piece it all back together

I've got some special forensics software that may help.