WD HDD Formatted, Which Data Recovery Vendor ?

PraKs · 23-11-2009, 04:52 PM

A friend of mine owns 1 TB SATA WD HDD purchased just 2 months back. It was major backup medium with lots of data. (Docs, pdf, photos, movies, songs)

By mistake this 1 TB HDD was formatted & new windows XP was installed over it. It was purely a SATA cable connecting mistake. HDD was formatted for 20 GB just to install Win XP over it & he realized his mistake as soon as he opened Disk management & found whole 1 TB got formatted. Disk space apart from 20 GB is still in RAW format & he didn’t format with NTFS fear of losing all of the data during recovery.

No data recovery tool is run on the system & space other then 20 GB is not used at all. In fact HDD was never booted after the mistake. HDD is brand new (2 months old) & working in perfect condition so I don’t see any use of opening the HDD/changing platter or motor etc. Sadly WD don't provide any data recovery services.

1 TB HDD had around 200-300 GB of data only which needs to be recovered. Remaining HDD is empty.

He checked out sites & reading feed back about different data recovery vendors. It seems vendors like Stellar is really costly & charges a bomb (30000+) for HDD of 1 TB. We tried to tell them its just 200 GB of data not 1 TB which needs to be recovered & there is no need to open HDD at all, its just recovery. but it they dont budge.

Can anyone suggest good data recovery person/company in Bangalore? Please post your real life experience. We DO NOT want to recover data with tools like Recuva etc which might mess up whole thing & possibility of data recovery after running 4-5 diff tools.

Is it advisable to replace the WD HDD with new HDD after data recovery? Does normal data recovery process puts lots of wear & tear on platter/bad sectors?

Please suggest.

hell_storm2006 · 23-11-2009, 05:27 PM

Sorry mate! Data Recovery is a very expensive process. The 30k tag is pretty much what you will see. Even if its 20k it sounds cheap, but can your friend afford it.

Best solution:
Try Recuva:
http://www.piriform.com/recuva

See if it helps!

Faun · 23-11-2009, 06:16 PM

You can easily recover data and dump it on a separate HDD. Here are some softwares to use.
1) R-Studio recovery
2) Recover My Files

get them from the Internet. Remember to run them from another drive and also save the data in another drive.

rhitwick · 23-11-2009, 11:33 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by kanjar

You can easily recover data and dump it on a separate HDD. Here are some softwares to use.
1) R-Studio recovery
2) Recover My Files

Good s/w recommended here.
I would like to add Recuva here.

If u don't want to recover data, just scan with any these s/w, (they just scan, don't mess up the structure) to check which data are recognized by these.

I used Recuva which recognized max (25GB) of my 930 GB data that I lost.

And, no, u don't need to change the HDD, as this is only due to formatting not any accidents (drop or etc ) or bad-sectors are generated on it.

If u r too skeptical, run checkdisk to find if the disk generated any bad sector.

harishgayatri · 24-11-2009, 08:03 AM

If the partition is shown as RAW

Then it can be recovered using Active Partition recovery, if he hasn't used any other tools for recovering it.

With Active partition recovery he will get back the original partition as it was.

One more question

Was his 1TB fully filled with Data?

please reply back
harishgayatri

PraKs · 24-11-2009, 02:04 PM

@hell_storm2006
Sorry bro, cant spend even 20k for 4k of HDD.

@kanjar
Thanks for software, but only worry is after running 3-4 diff softwares what if recovery vendor wont be able to recovery
anything due to my own tools

@harishgayatri
You gave BIG hope. After formatting no tools are used at all till date even HDD is disconneted. There is only 200-300 GB of data in 1 TB

If we use Active Partition recovery will it restore all old partitions with "DATA" ? Please reply

rhitwick · 24-11-2009, 06:30 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by PraKs

If we use Active Partition recovery will it restore all old partitions with "DATA" ? Please reply

The best answer for this u can get is "Try ur luck".

None guarantees a 100% recovery.

My advice would be, scan the drive with the s/w and check what all data it has recognized for recovery and what "%" of them are fully recoverable?

Then, restore the data as u wish.

Faun · 24-11-2009, 08:01 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by PraKs

@kanjar
Thanks for software, but only worry is after running 3-4 diff softwares what if recovery vendor wont be able to recovery
anything due to my own tools

Why do you want to go to a recovery vendor when your hard disk is detected and working fine ? Normally a person will go to a recovery vendor when his hard disk is not even detected in BIOS. So there is no way for him to try any softwares to recover. There may be a hardware fault at that time. So then going to a recovery vendor is the only choice unless the data is not important.

The softwares mentioned above will not damage you hard disk for worse. These just scan at lower level to identify the recoverable files. It's perfectly safe.

I have used them many times to recover my data.

PraKs · 25-11-2009, 12:45 PM

Thanks for advice guys.

Can someone tell me If we use Active Partition recovery will it restore all old partitions "with" data Or Just restore partitions with its names "without" data ? Please reply

Gauravs90 · 25-11-2009, 01:51 PM

Probably it should recover the partition with data.

PraKs · 25-11-2009, 04:53 PM

it seems harishgayatri has used it. Can you please give info ?

Any feed back appreciated.

harishgayatri · 27-11-2009, 10:13 PM

Hello PraKs.

I have tried Active partition recovery with my 80GB Samsung HDD when i accidentally deleted my MBR.

I had 100% success rate with that.

rajat · 28-11-2009, 12:24 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by PraKs

@hell_storm2006
Sorry bro, cant spend even 20k for 4k of HDD.

@kanjar
Thanks for software, but only worry is after running 3-4 diff softwares what if recovery vendor wont be able to recovery
anything due to my own tools

@harishgayatri
You gave BIG hope. After formatting no tools are used at all till date even HDD is disconneted. There is only 200-300 GB of data in 1 TB

If we use Active Partition recovery will it restore all old partitions with "DATA" ? Please reply

use stellar phoenix data recovery software. that is a paid software and it works great. i had that same problem, purchased that online and well...it worked great , to put it simply.

just remember to store the recovered data in separate harddisk and not on that one from which you are recovering the data. offcourse if the disk is physically damaged or there is any bad sectorr it wont work

Martin · 02-12-2009, 03:14 PM

I agree with hell_storm2006. I also think that data recovery is a expensive process. I had a similar situation and used Advanced File Recovery http://advanced-file-recovery.com. I like that with the help of this program lost or deleted files can be easily recovered from all types of storage media.