Recover lost data from formatted disk!

Hi, I am using a Samsung Laptop (Windows7 Home basic in it) and it was not booting. So, I used Ubuntu Live CD and booted up using that CD. I was able to find C: in that but I was not able to find my D: there. So, I just shut down the system. Now, to my surprise, both my C: and D: are formatted automatically and all the data is lost. Now, is there any way to recover the lost data?

Now, to my surprise, both my C: and D: are formatted automatically and all the data is lost.

That would be very odd. I am not aware of any way multiple drives could accidentally and automatically get formatted. Did you use a good security defense prior to this?

As far as recovering any data, the chances are not good. Much depends on how they were formatted. If "Quick" formatting was used, then all the data is still there, but all the file tables have been cleared and all the disk space has been marked as available. If a "Full" format, much more of the data may be lost.

In any case, any use of these drives WILL reduce recovery prospects.

I would install those drives (one at a time, of course) into an enclosure, or as a "secondary (NOT boot) drive into a second computer, then attempt to copy off any data. You might try a recovery program like Recuva from the makers of CCleaner.

Thanks Digerati for the reply. However, I want to let you know that now there is no operating system in the laptop. Now, if I install new OS by making new partition (as all the partitions are deleted), then are there any chances that data may be recovered? If yes, then can you please let me know if I have to take any precautions for that?

best option is to use a live cd that doesn't write anything to the drive and only runs in memory, if you install an os to the drive your guaranteed to overwrite something on the drive that may be important.

here's a tutorial i wrote for someone else using photorec to recover files from their drive, like Digerati as already said photorec is not the only option available to you, but whatever you do, you don't want to be writing anything to that drive at least until you've made every effort to recover your lost files.

http://forums.whatthetech.com/index.php?showtopic=120830

As I noted above, and as Doug has reiterated, any use of the drives will likely result in data being written to the drive. And that will overwrite your data.

Now, if I install new OS by making new partition (as all the partitions are deleted), then are there any chances that data may be recovered?

Installing anything - especially an OS, which is huge - and dinking with partitions will be most effective at ensuring any data on that drive is lost - forever! So once again, at this point, your goal is to read and recover any recoverable data from the drive WITHOUT writing to the drive. And the only way to do that is to not boot to it, install anything on it, or run any thing from it. It must be a secondary drive - either in an enclosure, attached as secondary drive, or even booting to a CD does the same thing.



@Doug - I tried to use a quote with the timestamp and post information too, and it came up in plain text, not HTML/bbCode view. I had to remove the timestamp and post info.

Reply to Digerati: No problem, and thanks. Doug