Hey guys bit of a strange one but my uncle gave me an external HDD 3 years ago. It had all his home movies on which he transferred to a bigger drive. I'm sure you've guessed it by now but that HDD has now broke. However the external HDD has only been used to store a few things on but has been formatted 3/4 times i guess over the years. What's the chances of recovering his home movies?
Chances of recovering files from 3 years ago on an external HDD?
- Thread starter AlphaDawg
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If it was a quick format each time and barely used, chances are good that many files are recoverable. If it ever had a full format, chances are very poor. Really you can only find out by plugging it in and seeing what recovery tools can pull off the drive.
I will try. I just checked the size of the drive is 500GB and it's got 375GB of stuff on it. Does that mean the files may have been overwritten?
Yes, it's possible if you've ever written anything to that drive then new data could have been put over files that were on the drive. But depending how much you wrote, many files may still be recoverable. Like I said, you have to try it and see.
Your uncle should be grateful to get anything at all, and should start keeping backups if the movies are that important to him.
Associate
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I'd say your chances of getting anything usable are pretty remote, unfortunately. 500GB nominal capacity translates to 465GiB formatted, and if it contains 375GiB of current data that means it's already 81% overwritten. That's even before you allow for previous multiple writes/deletions which may have overwritten part or all of the remaining space.
Once the original data is overwritten it's gone for good, there's absolutely no chance of getting it back. Furthermore, movie files tend to be large which further reduces the probability that anything will remain intact.
Nothing to lose by trying I suppose, you may get lucky with a few files but I wouldn't get your hopes up.
Once the original data is overwritten it's gone for good, there's absolutely no chance of getting it back. Furthermore, movie files tend to be large which further reduces the probability that anything will remain intact.
Nothing to lose by trying I suppose, you may get lucky with a few files but I wouldn't get your hopes up.
Soldato
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from experience I would agree.
most drives write the newest files to the fastest part of the disk first, so anything your uncle put on there would have most likely been written to the same place that you have written data to.
as others have said though it costs nothing to try and recover the data.
out of interest had you got a particular software in mind ?
we use recuva and getdataback
Soldato
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14 years ago I bought 500GB hard drive and backup data from old 250GB hard drive then full formatted 250GB hard drive and disconnected it then installed and formatted 500GB hard drive, installed Vista and transferred data to 500GB hard drive. I was panicked realised I forget to backup My Pictures and My Videos folders contained many pictures and movies, I googled data recovery from formatted hard drive and found Partition Magic and downloaded it then installed it and created and run Boot CD on desktop PC found 3 partition tables so I choose the last one that showed up all the files just before I formatted hard drive. I navigated to My Pictures and My Videos folders and it got all pictures and movies files, I marked all the files and Partition Magic successful recovered all files, I was very impressed all pictures and movies files worked.
It really shame Partition Magic was discontinued after Symantec bought it from PowerQuest.
I would suggest you to try EaseUS Data Recovery Wizard, it worked well with hard drive formatted few times.
https://www.easeus.com/resource/recover-hard-drive-reformatted-2-3-times.html
It really shame Partition Magic was discontinued after Symantec bought it from PowerQuest.
I would suggest you to try EaseUS Data Recovery Wizard, it worked well with hard drive formatted few times.
https://www.easeus.com/resource/recover-hard-drive-reformatted-2-3-times.html
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Associate
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I'm trying to follow what you're saying here, but it's kind of making my head hurt.
If you simply mean you recovered all your data from a full-formatted drive 14 years ago, it's entirely possible if the drive was formatted using Windows XP and nothing was subsequently written to it, as XP and earlier didn't zero-fill the drive during a full format (unlike later Windows versions). Once the space has been overwritten though, the data in those clusters is gone, there's simply no way of getting it back.
The OP's situation isn't as simple as yours unfortunately.
That link refers specifically to a quick format, not a full format (which zero-fills the drive in Vista and later).
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Just be careful what "home movies" you find 
Soldato
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Yes I was used Windows XP at the time recovered all pictures and videos after performed full formatted. It took about 30 mins to formatted 250GB and 1 hour to formatted 500GB was a pain in ass, that why Microsoft decided to use quick format as default in Vista and later when cleaned installed Windows during installation setup and Windows Explorer format tool used quick format. I would never do full format again after over 20 hours with a external 2TB hard drive and used DBAN Darik's Boot and Nuke with DoD Short method to performed secured erased hard drive with zero-fill after quick formatted completed in 2 hours then put it up for sale on ebay but unfortunately over 95% of people never secured erased hard drives properly before sell on ebay and other places. I bought 2 second hand blank 4TB hard drives and successful full recovered all data on both drives, not surprised people oftened used Windows's default quick format method on hard drives. Also my uncle's neighbour who work in IT advised my uncle to destroyed hard drives with important files in it when he no longer used it with a power tool to drilled through hard drives.
I told my uncle that IT guy was very stupid and should never destroyed it with a power tool and he should secured erased hard drives instead. I asked uncle to gave me all his hard drives so I used DBAN
Darik's Boot and Nuke
with DoD Short method to secured erased hard drives and showed to uncle proved him that all data cannot be and impossible to recovered then he was satisfied with it and asked me to sell it on ebay instead of destroyed it with a power tool.
I think OP has a chance to recover all data if his uncle used default quick format.
I think OP has a chance to recover all data if his uncle used default quick format.
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The format method is irrelevant really, the drive has already been overwritten with *at least* 375GiB of new data.
I do agree with you that it's a waste of often perfectly good hardware when HDDs are physically destroyed, but in fairness I can see where your uncle's neighbour is coming from - secure erasing using software alone is dependant on the operator being IT-savvy enough to ensure it's done properly, or trusting someone else to do it for them. On the other hand, anyone with the ability to swing a lump hammer or fire up a power drill can be assured of instant immediately-verifiable results.
In corporate settings physical destruction of HDDs is the norm, partly because there's less chance of something going wrong, but also because it's unrealistically time-consuming (and hence expensive in skilled/semi-skilled man-hours) to wipe them with software and then verify that the data is gone.
I was reading Amazons policy recently on destruction of SSDs used within AWS, and they actually degauss them prior to disposal. I recently bought some disks for work that have ISE, instant secure erase, whereby cycling of the crypto keys stored on the controller is enough to 'wipe' the disk without even touching the platter (I.e., Cryptographically scramble the data). Quite neat. Point being - data removal techniques in the Enterprise has moved on.
I agee btw, OP has next to no chance.
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