hklampshade Posted January 11, 2011 Share Posted January 11, 2011 I have a 500gb WD hard drive that was unreadable by my computer one day and asked if I wanted to reformat it. Against my better judgment, I reformatted the drive the second or third time it asked and now the disk is wiped. My question is, is there a way to restore the drive? I already know about testdisk and photorec and have used the latter, but photorec renames the files completely and I had over 150,000 files that were already categorized into about 300 or so folders and sub-folders and it would be a real pain to have to reorganize all that. If not, is there a program that can perform an auto-rename of music and video files from the name that is visible to its song/video name? I don't think I really need to say this, but I would like to try to keep this all free. I suppose I could just hire someone as a last resort, but I'd rather not. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
antiaircraft Posted January 11, 2011 Share Posted January 11, 2011 I'm afraid I can't really recommend any more capable recovery tools, as the ones I'm familiar with are all advanced Linux forensics systems. :( It's likely pretty difficult to reassemble the directory tree on a reformatted disk (again though, I'm unfamiliar with the NTFS filesystem). That said, I have come across an application called Advanced Renamer that is apparently very useful for sorting out ID3-tagged music files. Hopefully it'll be of some use to you. :yes: Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
hklampshade Posted January 11, 2011 Author Share Posted January 11, 2011 I'm afraid I can't really recommend any more capable recovery tools, as the ones I'm familiar with are all advanced Linux forensics systems. :( It's likely pretty difficult to reassemble the directory tree on a reformatted disk (again though, I'm unfamiliar with the NTFS filesystem). That said, I have come across an application called Advanced Renamer that is apparently very useful for sorting out ID3-tagged music files. Hopefully it'll be of some use to you. :yes: I don't think I'm supposed to do this since it doesn't really contribute to anything, I think, but I feel like I would be rude if I don't say thanks. So, thanks! It is definitely helpful. :) Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Masaryk Posted January 11, 2011 Share Posted January 11, 2011 As long as you DON'T WRITE ANYTHING TO THE DRIVE, it is possible to recover your files. My husband used to be a computer tech, and he says it's very possible to recover things from a quick formatted drive, so long as the drive is untouched. Unfortunately, he can't remember the name of the program they used at the computer shop, but you should be able to take your drive to any local computer shop to have them recover your data. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
antiaircraft Posted January 12, 2011 Share Posted January 12, 2011 Ah, thanks Meghan, I probably should have mentioned the do-not-write bit earlier. xD I don't think I'm supposed to do this since it doesn't really contribute to anything, I think, but I feel like I would be rude if I don't say thanks. So, thanks! It is definitely helpful. :) Saying thanks is definitely perfectly acceptable. :) You're welcome! Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
hklampshade Posted January 13, 2011 Author Share Posted January 13, 2011 As long as you DON'T WRITE ANYTHING TO THE DRIVE, it is possible to recover your files. My husband used to be a computer tech, and he says it's very possible to recover things from a quick formatted drive, so long as the drive is untouched. Unfortunately, he can't remember the name of the program they used at the computer shop, but you should be able to take your drive to any local computer shop to have them recover your data. No, the minute after I reformatted I went straight to Google and searched it so right now the drive remains untouched. Thankfully, I did do the quick reformat. I'm just worried about the cost at a computer shop. Somebody said theirs was around $600 and I don't want to spend that much if I can help it. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Masaryk Posted January 13, 2011 Share Posted January 13, 2011 If you go to a data recovery business, it will cost that much. Major retailers, like Best Buy, may also be pricey. But an independent computer shop should be much cheaper. It's not like they have to take the drive apart in a clean room to recover your data. They just need to run some software that will rebuild the file allocation table, and copy your data to another drive. If their prices are still crazy, it might be better for you to look for some good data recovery software yourself. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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