Recovering data after a fresh install?

[bluescreen]

My cousin reformatted and reinstalled windows vista but realized he didn't backup anything so he asked me if I knew if it was possible to recover anything still, told him I would look into it and not to install anything.

Busy with finals I don't have time to really look into it right now so I was wondering if anyone knows of anyway to recover his data and any recommendations on any programs etc?

[tiro_uspsss]

do u know if he did a 'quick format'? if so, this greatly increases his chances of getting stuff back.. u could try GetBackData - its worked for me in the past :up:

[Buckeye]

If he installed vista over the top on that format I don't think you will be able to get much off of that drive. Good Luck !

[bluescreen]

do u know if he did a 'quick format'? if so, this greatly increases his chances of getting stuff back.. u could try GetBackData - its worked for me in the past :up:

Yes he did a quick format but he did install vista over it, but has not done anything else like reinstalling programs so I am hoping I can help him recover at least some information.

[tiro_uspsss]

Yes he did a quick format but he did install vista over it, but has not done anything else like reinstalling programs so I am hoping I can help him recover at least some information.

give the prog i suggested a try - u may be surprised

[bluescreen]

give the prog i suggested a try - u may be surprised

Yeah I will be giving it a try this weekend thanks for the tip. :up:

[Th3MadScientist]

GetDataBack is a great program but it does not recover any data that has been formatted and had an OS overwrite it.

Your cousin probably will not get his data back within reasonable amounts of money, once its overwritten its basically gone unless you have extremely expensive data retrieval software.

[tiro_uspsss]

GetDataBack is a great program but it does not recover any data that has been formatted and had an OS overwrite it.

Your cousin probably will not get his data back within reasonable amounts of money, once its overwritten its basically gone unless you have extremely expensive data retrieval software.

partial agreement - if any data has been written over, then yes, probably cant recover.. but disagree on the format: the reason I had asked if it was a quick format is, iirc, a quick format only erases headers (?) (cant quite remember, its 2am :p: ), but leaves data still intact... or have got things mixed up? :D

[Buckeye]

If he had not installed Vista after the quick format then he would have had a Much Higher chance of recovering data.

But it's hard to recover data after it has been writen over after a Vista install.

The only hope would be for files on the disk that did not get touched by the install.

[Th3MadScientist]

partial agreement - if any data has been written over, then yes, probably cant recover.. but disagree on the format: the reason I had asked if it was a quick format is, iirc, a quick format only erases headers (?) (cant quite remember, its 2am :p: ), but leaves data still intact... or have got things mixed up? :D

I used "and" not "or" :rolleyes: All formatting does is it make the user not able to see the file although it still exists on the harddrive, once that sector is overwritten its gone.

[One_Hertz]

whatever has been overwritten won't be recovered, but some stuff should be found by progs like getdataback. Give it a try, its all based on luck in your situation.

[twilyth]

Another vote for get databack - I'm guessing both the old and new os use NTFS. Pretty sure quick format only overwrites first letter of file name in FAT's - along with the MBR and system areas. Don't know if veesta looks at other parts of drive it doesn't actually use. My guess would be that it doesn't.

Just out of curiosity, why didn't he do an upgrade?