Do my data erase if I initialize my hard drive

[williamxiong]

I have 100's of hours of video, audio and photos in my external Lacie Raid drive. If I accidently initialize my hard drive, does it delete my data?

Thanks

William

 

[sminlal]

Yes, it deletes your data.

Depending on how you initialize it and whether or not you've written data to it since it was initialized, you may or may not be able to get some or most of the data back using a data recovery program.

 

[dfusco]

It do!

 

[Guest]

Initialize? by reformatting? well, i don't thinks so, or it depends.

How? Whether the data will be deleted has different level of data loss. well, let me make it simple.

If you initialize your drive by reformatting with quick format, full format, regular format even did it twice, you can still retrieve files but need some tool like http://www.icare-recovery.com/

If you did initialize it by low-level formatting, then your data must be gone.

If you initiliazed your drive by disk repartitioning, then your files are still there, yes, once again, you need a tool like http://www.icare-recovery.com/

I did used this program icare data recovery to restore my photos in my reformatted external hard disk. So, i am telling the truth the data will not be lost until the low level formatting. Well, another one i forgot, until you have new data that overwrite the old files. Then both cases can cause data loss.

 

[williamxiong]

I have 100's of hours of video, audio and photos in my external Lacie Raid drive. If I accidently initialize my hard drive, does it delete my data?

Thanks

William

Thank you so much for you information. My Lacie external drive is 4 TB and its almost full. It might be a low initialize cause it tok\ok almost 8 hours to initialize the drive. I have used the "Stellphoenix data recover and Data Rescue 3 which is a program for Mac. It didn't find anything. So would that mean everything is gone? I really need some very important data in there. Do you think it will be worth sending to a big company to check or to cover my data? Would it be any chance at all that I might get some of my data at this point.

Tamk you.

William

 

[sminlal]

Not really. Initializing or formatting won't make your data deleted permanently.

Well if it really took 8 hours for his initialize to run then it likely means his data has been overwritten. If that's the case then there isn't going to be any way for him to get the data back short of having a friend in the CIA...

 

[williamxiong]

Thank you very much for all your info. I would like to try every possible way if I can get my data back. At this point I just don't want to send to anybody to do it. Cause I have contacted few company and they said if I have 4T in my hd then I am talking about couple thousand $$ up to get it.

Thanks

William

 

[sminlal]

It won't hurt to try some of the recovery programs that people have mentioned. But I'm pretty pessimistic about your chances...