I doubt this is possible..but worth a try?

Priapus

Priapus

Priapus

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Morning guys,

I've just had someone ask me a question, to which I would like to find out the answer.

A hard drive had lots of infomation on it, around R200,000's worth of data. Now, the drive has been formatted and had an OS reinstalled on it, this was by a bunch of guys who stole the computer from a company.

Is there any possibility, at all, that the infomation on the hard drive before the format and reinstall, could be recovered?

My thoughts are that it would be very unlikley, since the old data had been writen over by the reinstlation of the new OS.

However, would like to know from you guys if it's at all possible?

Many thanks!
 
Yes it is possible as the os will only take a small portion of the disk and that is the only part that is truely destroyed. A format does not destroy the data completely, it merely makes it possibly to put something over the top. With the correct tools you could get back the info though the legality of this question is a bit borderline lol


Whoop
 
What do you mean by, "though the legality of this question is a bit borderline lol"

Any what sort of tools would be used, only the ones you have to pay for as free ones wouldn't work?
 
Certain tools may be able to recover some of the data on the drive but depending on the importance of the data on the drive your best sure fire bet to getting the data back would be to go to a data recovery centre. They will dismantle the drive platters are perform thorough scans to retrieve data...but believe me, it won't be cheap. It's a certain amount per GB IIRC.
 
Ice On Fire said:
Morning guys,

I've just had someone ask me a question, to which I would like to find out the answer.

A hard drive had lots of infomation on it, around R200,000's worth of data. Now, the drive has been formatted and had an OS reinstalled on it, this was by a bunch of guys who stole the computer from a company.

Is there any possibility, at all, that the infomation on the hard drive before the format and reinstall, could be recovered?

My thoughts are that it would be very unlikley, since the old data had been writen over by the reinstlation of the new OS.

However, would like to know from you guys if it's at all possible?

Many thanks!
Click to expand...

Formatting doesn't overwrite any data, I don't know what r200,000 is supposed to mean but almost all the data will be recoverable, ontrack easyrecoverypro will do what you want. Whatever you do don't save anything to the hdd.
 
Energize said:
Formatting doesn't overwrite any data, I don't know what r200,000 is supposed to mean but almost all the data will be recoverable, ontrack easyrecoverypro will do what you want. Whatever you do don't save anything to the hdd.
Click to expand...


R200,000 means two hundred thousand Rands worth of data. Check my location; South Africa. :)
 
If there's a lot of valuable data on there then dont mess about with freeware and off the shelf tools (which are fine for the home user deleting a word document etc) and go to a specialist. They wont be cheap, but it'll be the most reliable method of getting as much, if not all, of the data back.
 
If you car starts mis-firing you could spend a little money and try to fix it yourself.
You might buy a new set of plugs, plug leads, that kind of thing and you may luck out.
If however your car started smoking and melting and you made the same purchase you probably wouldn't do yourself any favours.

If the data is as valuable as you say, stop now.
Take it to the professionals and see what they can recover.
This is not a job for a home user.
 
He's hardly going to destroy the data without writing anything to the drive, recovery programs run on the main drive and don't write anything to the drive that is being recovered.

I would be worried though about the fact that no backup was made and they managed to steal a whole server pc with £14k worth of data on it.
 
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Energize said:
He's hardly going to destroy the data without writing anything to the drive, recovery programs run on the main drive and don't write anything to the drive that is being recovered.

I would be worried though about the fact that no backup was made and they managed to steal a whole server pc with £14k worth of data on it.
Click to expand...

I also wonder why no back-up was done, but there you go.

What software would be best?
 
Seriously, if it's worth anything, don't do it yourself, send it to the experts. It'll prevent you accidentally damaging data.

Burnsy
 
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