File Recovery

[raidersforever01]

Does anyone know preferably a good freeware file recovery program, buddy of mine reformated his drive tryong to reinstall windows not realizing what he did.

[werty316]

Not sure if I should mention this or not but Hiren's BootCD has a great list of valuable applications which include data recovery software.

BTW did he do a regular format or low level format?

[Xero (1)ne]

Yah, Hirens Boot CD.

[tyle6]

www.recuva.com
nuff said, from the maker of CCleaner.

[raidersforever01]

Thats right i forgot about Hiren's. He formatted the drive usings the windows installer so i know he lost some stuff with the install but i will get what i can.

[Xantor]

Hirens Boot CD would be the definite pick from me as well.

[stlava]

If he began to install windows a good deal of the files won't be recoverable since they were probably over written. Windows xp offers 2 types of format quick and regular. The quick erases the ntfs file tables.. aka data is still there but the pointers are gone. Regular overwrites the data but in many cases is still partially recoverable. What you need to look for is a partition restorer.

[raidersforever01]

Nice thanks for the advice stlava maybe i will try that. Happen to know a partition restorer. From the looks of it windows was not installed but he did format it.

[mivanx77]

Hiren's CD is great, for less hassle and small files, try Recuva, its from the makers of Ccleaner.

http://www.recuva.com/

[tomato]

If your buddy did a low level format, then the data is most likely all but gone. A regular format is more likely to yield some recoverable files, if any.