Question Questions about my formatted external harddrive

[damiaan1234]

Here's the story: i wanted to turn a small partition of my external harddrive into a recovery disk or something, can't remember what it was exactly. it was some backup function in windows, that's all i remember.


But instead caused the harddrive to be formatted, losing all my files and being replaced with other files. What i want to know is :

1. Is it possible to recover all my files using a recovery program under these circumstances.
2. How high/low are the chance that this kind of formatting corrupted some of the deleted files preventing them from SHOWING UP in the recovery tool
3. What is the best recovery tool you guys can recommend?
4. Is it recommended to try multiple recovery tools?

info that might be needed:

1. ext hdd: 1TB
2. files contained pre-format: around 900GB
3. replaced files after formatting: 2GB
4. haven't touched it since the accident, no files were transferred into the hdd

 

[ss202sl]

As far as recovering the files. if the new files were written where the old files were, then you probably won't be able to recover them. Try this
https://www.ccleaner.com/recuva

 

[damiaan1234]

As far as recovering the files. if the new files were written where the old files were, then you probably won't be able to recover them. Try this
https://www.ccleaner.com/recuva

does that mean recuva won't show these corrupted files?

 

[ss202sl]

It may or may not. Depends on what was overwritten by the new files

 

[damiaan1234]

It may or may not. Depends on what was overwritten by the new files

how high/low are the chances that the files were overwritten?

 

[popatim]

Oh at least 2GB were definitely overwritten but you should be able to recover nearly all the rest.

You will need someplace to recover them to. You can't recover to the drive you are recovering from, it would overwrite more files.

Lastly, you always want to avoid having only 1 copy of important (to you) files. So I suggest you pick up another external drive and have 1 main external and 1 for backup. Ideally you want a second backup that you can keep offsite in case something extremely bad, such as a lightning strike, takes out all your hardware.

 

[USAFRet]

how high/low are the chances that the files were overwritten?

Somewhere between 0% and 100%.

All you can do is try.

Other options for recovery:
TestDisk
PhotoRec

 

[damiaan1234]

Oh at least 2GB were definitely overwritten but you should be able to recover nearly all the rest.

You will need someplace to recover them to. You can't recover to the drive you are recovering from, it would overwrite more files.

Lastly, you always want to avoid having only 1 copy of important (to you) files. So I suggest you pick up another external drive and have 1 main external and 1 for backup. Ideally you want a second backup that you can keep offsite in case something extremely bad, such as a lightning strike, takes out all your hardware.

Somewhere between 0% and 100%.

All you can do is try.

Other options for recovery:
TestDisk
PhotoRec

lets say it was just formatted, is it possible for even the best recovery tool, to not find everything?
how high/low would those chances be?

 

[USAFRet]

Yes, it is entirely possible to not find "everything".
Especially if you're expecting "everything" to come back in exactly the same folder structure it was in originally.

In fact, finding 100% of everything, in the exact perfect condition and location, is pretty much impossible.