What software can I use for data recovery of deleted files on a Western Digital internal hard drive

[jcakes18]

I am using Windows 7 currently, and my main hard drive is a Western Digital 1TB Caviar Black along with a secondary Caviar Blue drive. My kids deleted some of my files/folders on accident and got a virus, so I had to reinstall Windows 7 on one of the two drives. I really need those files back.when I search I can see the specific folders, but the files are missing. I'm talking about work related files, years of family photos and my entire ITunes library of almost 18,000 songs. What software can I use for internal drive data recovery since Western Digital doesn't offer any from their site? Also, can I use another brands software, like Seagate for example or 3rd party software. Please Please help!

 

[popatim]

There are several free ones that are decently good. Recuva, Photorec, Testdisk, Stellar Recovery to name a few.
I suggest getting an external drive to recover the files to. Afterwards you can use the external as your backup device. Since we never know when a drive will fail, important documents should always have at least 1 backup.

 

[jason201]

Generally speaking, any data recovery software would do (they're not manufacturer specific!)
There's Recuva (which is free), but personally, I like r-studio best.
Anyhow, do keep two things in mind, firstly, deleted data is only recoverable til overwritten!
You've mentioned you've had the OS reinstalled, so this may reduce your chances of a full recovery.
And in addition to the above, provided your data is recoverable at all - You CANNOT recover it into the same drive it was deleted from.

 

[USAFRet]

... work related files, years of family photos and my entire ITunes library of almost 18,000 songs.

I hate to point to this, but that pic to the right------------------------->