How to Recover Data from a Formatted Hard Drive?

Data is precious. Losing your critical documents, valuable photos or videos, and other important data after formatting your hard drive can be a nightmare.

Whether you accidentally format the hard drive while creating/extending/removing the partitions or do it purposefully to fix a RAW or unallocated hard drive, your data remains at stake in both scenarios.

However, data can still be recovered from a formatted hard drive. Before proceeding with data recovery, it is important to understand the basics of drive formatting.

Here, you will learn about drive formatting, the possibility of recovering a formatted hard drive, and the different methods for doing so.

What is Drive Formatting & How Does it Work?

Drive formatting refers to configuring hard drives before the OS installation. Formatting is done by generating a new file system, such as NTFS, exFAT, FAT32, etc., and assigning it a drive letter to make it visible and accessible to the users. The file system on the hard drive manages the storage space and enables the OS to access and manage data. The process essentially gives the hard drive a blank slate to be ready for new data, as it cannot be used in the RAW state.

However, there are times when your hard drive runs into an error or gets corrupted. Then, you need to format the drive to make it accessible again, removing all the data inside. You can format a drive through Windows File Explorer or the Disk Management tool. You may also use the command-line disk partition utility ‘DiskPart’ to ‘Quick Format’ or ‘Full Format’ on a hard drive or other storage devices.

Quick format

When you ‘Quick Format’ a drive (the default selected option), it only replaces the Master File Table (MFT), which contains the addresses of the data stored on the drive. Analogically, MFT is like a book index that lists the chapters with a page number (address) containing the information (chapter).

So, tearing off the index won’t remove the chapters. It means it doesn’t delete the data on the drive. The data remains there but is inaccessible. So, it can be recovered unless new data overwrites it.

Full Format

The Full Format erases the data (overwrites existing data with zeros), rebuilds the file structure, and scans the hard drive to check if it’s working fine. It scrubs the hard drive from scratch. It also repairs the soft bad sectors and marks the hard bad sectors (caused by physical damage). As a result, full format takes much longer to format your hard drive entirely and removes the data forever.

Note: In the case of a full format, data can’t be recovered, even if it’s done only once. Therefore, take the utmost caution while formatting your hard disks or other drives.

How do I Recover Data from a Formatted Hard Drive?

Data can be recovered after formatting the hard drive using backups and/or professional data recovery software. Follow the steps below to retrieve your files, folders, and other data successfully:

Use Backup

You should always back up your hard drive or system data. If you backup your data either on a separate hard drive, a cloud platform, or Windows backup utilities (File History or Backup & Restore), you can quickly regain access to the data. You must connect to your backup, locate all the files you want, and restore them to your system or an external storage media drive.

After the procedure, double-check your files to ensure everything is in order. If you notice any damaged files or missing data, it is possible that the backup used for recovery was incomplete or damaged. You should restart the recovery process with a different backup (if available).

Use Professional Data Recovery Software

If you don’t have a backup or an incomplete backup is available, don’t opt for any hit-and-trial method. Use professional data recovery software, such as Stellar Data Recovery Professional. It is an easy-to-use yet powerful tool that helps restore data from a formatted or corrupted hard drive. Whether you have accidentally formatted your hard drive or it has resolved any hard drive error, the software efficiently retrieves all sorts of data from HDDs, SSDs, USB drives, SD cards, and more.

Additionally, the software supports recovery in cases of accidental deletion, drive corruption, malware attack, blue screen of death errors, and more. It features a bootable media recovery option that helps recover data from crashed or unbootable Windows PCs.   

Follow the steps given in the video below and recover up to 100% of the data from a formatted Windows PC and supported storage media drive:

Data Loss Prevention & Recovery

Users typically format their drives to fix issues when a hard drive becomes unreadable, inaccessible, fails to respond, or has bad sectors.

This usually helps, but most of the time, it removes the data stored on the disk and leaves the user with many files lost. Backing up your hard drive is the best way to prevent data loss due to hard drive errors, formatting, and corruption.

However, sometimes, you may have an incomplete or corrupted data backup, which fails to help you retrieve your data after formatting your drive. That’s when you can rely on Stellar data recovery professional software to perform formatted hard drive recovery.

Conclusion

Backup is the most reliable way to restore lost files and prevent permanent data loss due to formatting and other reasons. But when the backup isn’t available or is obsolete, use formatted drive recovery software such as Stellar Data Recovery Professional to restore data after formatting any Windows-supported storage media drive.

The software thoroughly scans each sector on the formatted hard drive to find traces of lost data and recovers the maximum amount of data. It uses advanced file signature-based techniques to recover lost files from formatted, re-formatted, and severely corrupt hard drives.

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About The Author

Oliver Powell

Oliver Powell is a Data Recovery Expert at Stellar®. He is a passionate technology blogger & content creator, He explores new applications and has deep understanding of data recovery. He has experience in Windows & Mac data recovery domain.