Software for Data Recovery from Hard Drive?

Hey Folks,

I have a question for you all. I have a family member who recently formatted his hard drive. Unfortunately, he uses Outlook Express for his e-mails. I say unfortunate, because he had folders created under his inbox that of course were not backed up.

Now here is my question, since this is not my area of expertise. Are there any programs that can be used (within a reasonable price range) that can be purchased/downloaded to try to recover this data? Or is it pretty much gone for good?

I've never attemped this myself. At work, in the event of a failed hdd and the user had data stored locally, the hdd was sent out to some place for data recovery. They charged something like 2-3 thousand bucks with no guarantee of recovery. So I am just curious if there is something that could be done to try to recover the data for him.

I will most likely be the one doing this, as he is not pc savvy at all, lol.

Thanks in advance for any help.

 

If those sectors of the harddrive have not been overwritten, there's a good chance of recovery. There's a couple apps in the page in my sig. PC Inspector is the best free one by far, RecoverMyFiles is the best commercial (for home users) that I've found.. it costs a bit, but I think it's worth it.

 

If it has to be recovered at any cost, then the best place is DriveSavers. A bit pricey for this application, but worth knowing for future reference

 

getdataback has always been successful for me, the price seems ok for its capabilities. its a lil bit cheaper than spinrite, also a good data recover or so ive read.

 

Thanks guys, much appreciated.

So since he formatted the drive tho, do you still think there is a chance of recovery? Or is he pretty much hosed?

 

there is definitely a chance, windows does a simple quick format and a full format is just a quick format plus a scan for bad sectors; otoh if the data had been wiped then chances of recovery would have been very very slim.

 

It's still worth a try, but I think it's hosed.
He probably didn't just format the drive, he probably started to reinstall windows, programs, updates, etc.
There is also grc.com's Spinrite.
I can't vouch for it's recovery ability because I haven't needed it for this purpose. But it also is used for preventative maintenance.
This is the best reason to keep your data on a separate partition or drive.
Hope he can get some data back.

 

Thanks guys. Yeah he reformatted it when he re-installed Windows 2000 Professional. I will try to update you all with results on this one.

Thanks again.

 

the more he uses it there'll be less chance of recovery.

i deleted a whole partition the other day and still managed to recover it about 5/6 days later, it was fully intact. the program i used only recovers partitions and was abit complicated, it was in dos. but, zorro zorrito told me the program i used was on Ultimate Boot CD (UBCD) so you might find something there.

http://www.ultimatebootcd.com/

 

Thanks for the info ice.