Recovering data from a re-formatted drive after a disk failure
Posted: 06 Dec 2016, 15:00
Hello,
I'm at a loss as to how to proceed and would very much appreciate some guidance on how to sort this mess out.
I have/had a 3TB external HDD which was used store family photos (birth of our children, parties, first-time events etc) and some videos along with copies of important documents.
I was transferring some photos from the camera to the disk when our cat stood on the power cable and it caused a power loss, but it was not enough to just remove the power as the cable was only partially out. After that the drive was responding very slowly to read/write requests, so I used various programs to try and fix the drives ability to read/write data. None of these seemed to work, so I formatted the disk thinking this was the right thing to do (in some cases it is the right thing to do).
I thought that I could use an off-the-shelf data recovery program, but that was not the case. The best I could get was a RAW recovery, so I sent the disk off to a professional company and they were able to show me the file and folder structure of the disk before the formatting, but I couldn't afford the price so I had the disk sent off to a second company, but they were only able to provide the files in a RAW format.
During this time I came across TestDisk and now I have the disk back I'm very hopeful that TestDisk will be able to help me, but I've read through the instructions and videos on Youtube and unless it's specific to my issue then I get confused and lost on what to do.
I'm currently searching for other partitions on the disks, but would REALLY appreciate some one helping me out and giving me the step-by-step guides (I'd like to learn about what is being done along the way, if possible).
Thank you for any responses.
I'm at a loss as to how to proceed and would very much appreciate some guidance on how to sort this mess out.
I have/had a 3TB external HDD which was used store family photos (birth of our children, parties, first-time events etc) and some videos along with copies of important documents.
I was transferring some photos from the camera to the disk when our cat stood on the power cable and it caused a power loss, but it was not enough to just remove the power as the cable was only partially out. After that the drive was responding very slowly to read/write requests, so I used various programs to try and fix the drives ability to read/write data. None of these seemed to work, so I formatted the disk thinking this was the right thing to do (in some cases it is the right thing to do).
I thought that I could use an off-the-shelf data recovery program, but that was not the case. The best I could get was a RAW recovery, so I sent the disk off to a professional company and they were able to show me the file and folder structure of the disk before the formatting, but I couldn't afford the price so I had the disk sent off to a second company, but they were only able to provide the files in a RAW format.
During this time I came across TestDisk and now I have the disk back I'm very hopeful that TestDisk will be able to help me, but I've read through the instructions and videos on Youtube and unless it's specific to my issue then I get confused and lost on what to do.
I'm currently searching for other partitions on the disks, but would REALLY appreciate some one helping me out and giving me the step-by-step guides (I'd like to learn about what is being done along the way, if possible).
Thank you for any responses.