data recovery - can you please help me?

hey guys

around two years ago, my girlfriend obtained a digital camera. we took quite a lot of pictures over the following years, and had the pictures kept on her laptop hard drive. lately shes been dealing with some virus issues, and it had got so bad that when she started her computer, it was just a black screen. so last week she took it upon herself, without notifying me, to bring the computer into some computer shop, and then got the whole thing formatted. when i learned this, i cried. ive since felt sadness, denial, frustration, devastation, and outright rage

now ive heard that when you delete a file, its still somehow kept on the computer somehow. i had always thought though, that when a computer is formatted, whats done is done, and the data is gone

that is until 10 minutes ago, when i googled "can you recover files after formatting". it appears that sometimes you indeed can, sometimes recover data after disk formatting. im finding several different softwares available that claim to do just this. message boards also seem to be discussing the possibility of this. if you want, you can check out some of the first links that pop up after you google the aforementioned search:

http://www.google.co...=UTF-8&oe=UTF-8

user Cooper Int says:

"I've recovered files after formatting my drive. It is possible, you just need the right software."

user hitmeback says:

"i recovered over 20 gb of data after formating and repartioning by help of easy recovery pro"

and so on and so forth...

if someone could please help me get some of these files back i would be eternally grateful. the pictures ive lost were of some of the most special times of my life. i would pay loads of money to get these pictures back, i want them back so badly

anyway, any help would be greatly appreciated

thanks again guys

bye for now

It seems that you've answered your own question? Try the software mentioned, or if you're really willing to pay lots of money, there are services which specialize in data recovery. They are expensive though, and there are no guarantees in what they are able to recover.

Give it a try ET. I feel for you. It sucks to lose important data. Don't be too hard on your GF.

data shows up on the forum occasionally...maybe ask him nicely to come back?

Piriform Recuva.

Don't do anything else on the laptop until you are done recovering what data is left.

Also, start doing regular backups! Just be glad the drive didn't crash.

Throwing away data is the watmm way. So KUDOS for that.

You need one of these

Here it is:

yes it's absolutely possible unless the empty space left by those formatted files got overwritten, i used this program to recover data after some 8gb SD card got corrupted:

http://www.z-a-recovery.com/

Give the shop a call and see how exactly everything was done and whether they think you could get some data back.

ayo. I got a suggestion, just copy the backups from your external disk, back onto the computer.

also,

get a new girlfriend, overwrite old memories with new ones.

he did it for the sadness, denial, frustration, devastation, and outright rage

I didn't feel like reading your post but just get Testdisk and Photorec, they're free and the best tools you can get if you're not bringing your disk into a professional data recovery thing.

If it doesn't exist in at least 3 places, it doesn't exist.

Backup Your Shit Guys

Twice

ET: It depends what sort of format they did: A quick format (just re-organises the index part of the drive) or a full format (wipes all data).

Also bear in mind that the more the laptop is used, the more data will get permanently overwritten (if indeed it is still there).

Some computer shops might be able to help with the recovery - for a fee.

  On 9/23/2011 at 8:50 AM, lumpenprol said:

data shows up on the forum occasionally...maybe ask him nicely to come back?

damn, you got there before me. 16 hours before me.

  On 9/23/2011 at 2:09 PM, eugene said:

also,

 

get a new girlfriend, overwrite old memories with new ones.

this. so this. how come she didn't care when taking the laptop to be 'fixed', about your photo's 'n stuff?

it was probably a low level format so you should be able to recover quite a bit... preferably tear the drive out of the laptop, connect to another computer and run the recovery software from there.