Hello, Long story short, after having problems with my precious laptop, I gave it to a friend who apparently knows computers for him to fix it, and after telling him many times NOT to format my hard drive, no matter what, he did anyway. I would like to know if it's possible to save/recover data from a formated disk. Thank you
its depends on how it was formatted. if it was done using quick format mode, which only formats the table of contents and leaves the rest of the data (which will be written over when called for) then recovery software should work. but if it has been fully formatted, i'm not sure if the data can be recovered. sometimes it can't, sometimes if can't. if the drive has been formatted, and windows installed after formatting, then there is the possibility that the new data installed on the drive has been written over the data you want to recover on certain sectors of the disk. long story short, it still would be worth investigating. you can download trial versions of recovery software which will scan the drive and tell you if there is data to be recovered. if there is, then you can register the program and get the data. they usually cost between $30 and $50, so a small price to pay for your old files.
try the free photorec, it can recover many different type of data. Usually the only way you can't recover it is if you do a "secure format" which writes random data to the drive. http://forums.afterdawn.com/thread_view.cfm/697001 files that it can recover http://www.cgsecurity.org/wiki/File_Formats_Recovered_By_PhotoRec
