How to recover overwritten/formatted data
Posted: 06 Jun 2013, 16:09
Ok, first of all let me say I am new here and I have never used testdisk before. (I hope I am posting on the correct board).
Anyway, a little background material (I'll *try* to be brief): Several years ago, I had a main computer with one main hard drive (NTFS, if I remember). This hard drive had all my data, family pictures, and stuff on it. During an system upgrade (Some new PC's came into the house), this main hard drive was somehow accidentally formatted and Windows XP re-installed over everything on it (Pictures, data, etc...). At that time, I used a program called 'GetDataBack' to try and recover the files, and although it found them, it could not recover them (It only recovered empty files, or files with limited data.) Now, several years later, I would like to try again with different (And more advanced?) software, and so TestDisk seems to be my best bet.
The only problem is, of course, I have never used TestDisk before and I am unsure of the procedure to use in my particular situation.
TL;DR: Accidentally formatted and reinstalled windows xp over main hard drive, looking to recover data from before it was formatted and a new windows installation was put on.
Now, I am *fairly* tech savvy, and so I know that, realistically, there is no *magical* way to perfectly recover files that may have been entirely overwritten, but I want to recover anything I *can*. What can I do?
Anyway, a little background material (I'll *try* to be brief): Several years ago, I had a main computer with one main hard drive (NTFS, if I remember). This hard drive had all my data, family pictures, and stuff on it. During an system upgrade (Some new PC's came into the house), this main hard drive was somehow accidentally formatted and Windows XP re-installed over everything on it (Pictures, data, etc...). At that time, I used a program called 'GetDataBack' to try and recover the files, and although it found them, it could not recover them (It only recovered empty files, or files with limited data.) Now, several years later, I would like to try again with different (And more advanced?) software, and so TestDisk seems to be my best bet.
The only problem is, of course, I have never used TestDisk before and I am unsure of the procedure to use in my particular situation.
TL;DR: Accidentally formatted and reinstalled windows xp over main hard drive, looking to recover data from before it was formatted and a new windows installation was put on.
Now, I am *fairly* tech savvy, and so I know that, realistically, there is no *magical* way to perfectly recover files that may have been entirely overwritten, but I want to recover anything I *can*. What can I do?