How to Recover Files from Formatted Hard Drive: Full Guide

Formatting a hard drive makes it available for storing new data. However, formatting does not always mean that all the original file data has been immediately and permanently erased.

Part 1 – Can I Recover Data from a Formatted Hard Drive

Whether formatted hard drive recovery is possible depends mainly on the type of formatting and what happened to the drive afterward. If the drive was quick-formatted and you have not written new data to it, data recovery software may be able to find some or all of the previous files.

If new files have been saved to the formatted drive, they may overwrite the areas occupied by the original data. The more the drive is used after formatting, the greater the risk of losing recoverable data.

Quick Format vs. Full Format

A quick format is generally more favorable for hard drive recovery. Microsoft states that Quick Format deletes the file table and root directory of a previously formatted volume without performing a sector-by-sector scan for bad areas.

A full format can be much more destructive to previously stored data. A full format can write to every sector of the disk. As a result, recovering files after a full format can be significantly more difficult.

When Is Formatted Hard Drive Recovery Possible

Recovery is more likely when:

• The hard drive was quick-formatted.
• You stopped using the drive immediately after formatting.
• Little or no new data has been written to the drive.
• The drive is physically healthy and detected normally by Windows.

Recovery becomes more difficult when the drive has been heavily used after formatting, a full format operation has been performed, or the drive has physical problems.

Therefore, stop using the formatted drive and start data recovery immediately.

Part 2 – How to Recover Files from Formatted Hard Drive Free

Method 1. Recover Files with MiniTool Power Data Recovery

MiniTool Power Data Recovery can scan a formatted partition or an entire physical disk to find recoverable files. It is suitable when files have become inaccessible after formatting, and you do not have another copy of the data.

It can help recover documents, photos, videos, emails, and other types of data from formatted hard drives and other storage media.

The free edition supports recovering 1 GB of files for free.

MiniTool Power Data Recovery FreeClick to Download100%Clean & Safe

Step 1: Launch the software. On the main interface, you should select the formatted drive to scan. Or you can go to Devices to scan the entire physical hard disk.

Step 2: Scanning the entire disk may take a longer time due to the large capacity of the disk and numerous files. In order to detect all the files, you are not suggested to interrupt the scan process in the midway.

On the result page, files are sorted in according with their paths into three folders: Deleted Files, Lost Files, and Existing Files. However, compared with expanding folders by folders to find aimed items, you can change to the Type tab to check files by their types and file formats.

Additionally, you can filter files by file type, file category, file size, and file last modified date.

Step 3: With the above features, you can locate the required files easily. Add check marks in front of the files you want to restore and click the Save button. In the small window, you need to choose a new destination for those files.

This is all about how to recover data after formatting a hard drive with MiniTool Power Data Recovery. If you are running MiniTool Power Data Recovery Free, you should update to an advanced edition to recover files larger than 1GB.

Method 2: Recover Formatted Hard Drive with Windows File Recovery

Windows File Recovery is Microsoft’s command-line tool for recovering lost files from local storage devices. It can also be used when files are lost after formatting.

Unlike MiniTool Power Data Recovery, it does not provide a graphical interface, so you need to enter recovery commands manually. The basic syntax is:

winfr source-drive: destination-drive: [/mode] [/switches]

For formatted hard drive recovery, Windows File Recovery uses Extensive mode to search the drive for recoverable data.

Download Windows File Recovery from the Microsoft Store and launch it to recover files.

Each parameter in the command syntax tells Windows File Recovery where to find the lost files, where to save them, and how to perform the recovery.

• source-drive: The drive where the files were lost. For example, H:.
• destination-drive: A different drive where Windows File Recovery will save the recovered files. For example, M:.
• [/mode]: Specifies the recovery mode. For files lost after formatting, use /extensive.
• [/switches]: Optional settings that let you narrow or customize the recovery, such as searching for specific file types with /n.

Here are two examples:

1. Recover files from the formatted drive H: to drive M:, use: winfr H: M: /extensive.

When asked to continue, type Y.

2. Recover photos and Word documents, add the /n switch: winfr H: M: /extensive /n *.jpg /n *.docx.

Windows File Recovery vs. MiniTool Power Data Recovery

Part 3 – Classification of Hard Drive Formatting

In general, formatting is divided into two types: low-level formatting and high-level formatting. If there is no special instruction, the hard drive formatting usually refers to high-level formatting process while the floppy disk formatting often includes both formatting types. Read the following content to learn more about low-level formatting and high-level formatting.

Low-level formatting:

What is low-level formatting?

low-level formatting, also known as physical formatting, is considered as initialization by some hard drive manufacturers. At early times, encoding schemes like CHS addressing, frequency modulation (FM), and modified frequency modulation (MFM) were used in disks. Low-level formatting was used to refer to the operation of dividing cylinders, tracks, and sectors. But currently, this kind of formatting generally refers to the zero-fill operation of a hard drive.

As a preliminary job for high-level formatting, low-level formatting can only be done in a DOS environment and its object is a whole disk. Strictly speaking, low-level formatting includes those steps:

• dive a disk into several cylinders and tracks;
• divide each track into several sectors;
• divide each sector into several parts, such as the identification section, GAP area, and DATA area.

When low-level formatting is required?

In fact, the low-level formatting work has been performed on each hard drive by manufacturers when it leaves the factory, so usually, users don’t need to do such a thing. It should be noted that the low-level formatting is a loss operation, which has a negative impact on the service life of the hard drive. As a result, lots of manufacturers recommend that this low-level formatting should be users’ last resort unless they encounter such things:

• A hard drive is badly corrupted that the operating system cannot recover it, and a zero-fill can help in this situation.
• To get rid of almost any data-related problem on the drive, such as viruses, corrupted partitions, and the like.
• To hide bad sectors by telling the drive to remap them to its collection of spares.

How to perform low-level formatting?

The CMOS of many motherboards provides the low-level formatting function and it is usually embedded in HDD Low Level Format option. If users have this option on their motherboard, they can directly choose Hard Disk Low-Level Format Utility for low-level formatting.

Of course, there are many motherboards that have no such feature. In this case, users had better make use of the hard drive management/low-level formatting program provided by their hard drive manufacturers, instead.

What’s more, if users’ hard drive is a standard one, they can also turn to third-party tools when low-level formatting is needed.

High-level formatting:

What is high-level formatting?

High-level formatting is also known as logical formatting. It writes specific data into specific area of the disk according to the file system users have selected, in order to achieve the effect of disk/disk partition initialization and file deletion.

High-level formatting includes the following operations: rewriting the corresponding region of the partition table in Master Boot Record (MBR) and dividing certain disk partition space to store information that is used for file management, like file allocation table and file directory table, according to users’ selection on file system.

In other words, high-level formatting refers to removing data on a hard drive, generating boot sector information, initializing FAT, and marking logical bad sectors. This kind of formatting is generally involved in the OS reinstallation process; since MBR is not going to be rewritten, there is a great possibility that a virus exists. But don’t worry, the MBR virus can be completely cleared by using antivirus software or executing fdisk/mbr in DOS.

In the MS-DOS environment, we can make use of the FORMAT command to format a hard drive. However, the formatting operation is executed by Explorer in Windows OS.

When high-level formatting is required?

• Initialize drive: a new disk drive can’t be put into use before formatting. So if users want to use a new drive to store and manage data, they need to format it.
• Kill virus: since computer viruses spread widely through the internet, users can get easily attacked by them. If users want to kill viruses in certain drives and make them clean, they’d better format the drive rather than just using antivirus software.
• Change file system/drive size: once a drive is set, its file system and size are determined. When users need to change any of them, they have to format the drive again. However, we’d like to share the good news with them – they can achieve those easy purposes by using MiniTool Partition Wizard we mentioned before without reformatting.
• Format inaccessible drive: the commonest case is that users open a drive, only to find it can’t be accessed. To further use it, users have no choice but to format this drive.

All in all, please think twice before you finally decide to high-format your drive which saves business/personal files. Remember, though you are able to recover files from formatted hard drive in most cases, it’s not a 100% sure thing. Protection is always more important than recovery.

How to perform high-level formatting?

Here we’ll introduce 2 common ways to format a drive in Windows.

1. Format with Partition Wizard

Step 1: launch MiniTool Partition Wizard, select the drive that needs to be reformatted, and choose the “Format Partition” function in the left action panel.

MiniTool Partition Wizard FreeClick to Download100%Clean & Safe

Step 2: The “Format Partition” window will appear and users can input a partition label and choose a file system and cluster size for the drive. After that, click “OK” to go back to the main interface.

Step 3: click the “Apply” button in the upper left corner and press “Yes” in the pop-up warning window to confirm changes.

2. Format in Windows Explorer

Step 1: enter Windows Explore.

Step 2: users should right-click the drive they plan to format and choose “Format…” from the context menu.

Step 3: users can set a file system for the drive waiting to be formatted. What’s more, they are able to change the allocation unit size (but we recommend users should keep the default value if there’s no special need). Also, they can choose to create a label for this drive or just skip this part. At last, users can click the “Start” button to get the formatting process begun.

Step 4: a prompt window will appear at this time, warning users that the formatting operation will erase all data. If users are sure they want to format the drive, please click “OK” to continue. Then, at the end of formatting, users can close the window to put it to an end.

Part 4 – Summary

At the end of this post, we would like to summarized what we have gone through. In a nutshell, formatting can be divided into low-level formatting and high-level formatting. Only hard drives adopted with high-level formatting has the possibility of data recovery, that is to use MiniTool Power Data Recovery or the similar.

If users have any questions on how to recover files from formatted hard drive, just leave us a comment at the bottom part. Also, users can send an email to [email protected] for technical assistance.