How to Recover Files from Formatted Hard Drive: Full Guide

Part 1 – Can I Recover Data after Format?

Formatting refers to an initialization operation performed on a disk to make it available for data storage. However, users can also choose to format the hard disk drive anytime they want after data storage. They only need to be aware of the fact that all files will be cleared after formatting was actually performed on the hard drive. Some users may want to ask what if a drive has been formatted unintentionally. Do they have a way to recover files from formatted hard drive?

Issue:

I stupidly formatted the wrong hard drive when there are two external hard drives connected on my computer. It is a WD external hard drive. I heard about the data recovery software which could help restore the saved data back from a formatted drive. But, I am afraid the program may make things worse. Do I have to use a data recovery program to get back my videos? Is there anyone that could give me some suggestions? Thanks!ccm.net

In fact, file recovery from damaged drive is not always practical. For instance, if a hard drive has been sent to manufacturers for low-level formatting, files in it will be gone forever; but if the drive is performed with high-level formatting, there is still a possibility for data recovery. To get more info about formatting types, please refer to Part 3 – Classification of Hard Drive Formatting.

Next, we will show users how to recover formatted hard drive.

Part 2 – Recover Files from Formatted Hard Drive

Imagine this, one of your drives saves important files, but when you try to open it and access files, you fail. The system prompts that “you need to format this disk before you can use it“. At this critical moment, you agree to “Format disk” in order to use the drive as usual. Unfortunately, if you do format the drive and lose some important files, what should you do to recover the formatted drive?

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Our advice is not to make any changes to the formatted hard drive and to install MiniTool Power Data Recovery – a user-friendly data recovery program for even green hands – to recover data from formatted hard drive as well as formatted removable devices.

MiniTool Power Data Recovery FreeClick to Download100%Clean & Safe

Step 1: You can download and install MiniTool Power Data Recovery Free on your computer. If your formatted hard drive is an external device, you need to connect it to your computer first and then launch the software.

On the main interface, you should select the formatted drive to scan. If there are several partitions on the hard drive, change to the Devices tab and click the Scan button.

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, setting the filter criteria is also an efficient method to narrow down the file list. You can select the corresponding option based on your situation to filter out unwanted files by file type, file category, file size, and file last modified date.

Alternatively, finding a specific file with the Search feature improves the data recovery efficiency largely. You can type the complete or partial name of the file into the search box and press Enter to allow the software to make a preliminary filter. Afterward, use the Preview function to verify the file content.

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 as saving data to the original file path may cause data recovery to fail due to data overwriting.

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.

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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 3 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.

3. Format in Windows Disk Management

Step 1: choose one way to open the Disk Management:

• click on the “Computer” icon on the desktop and choose the “Manage” option from the pop-up menu. Then, choose “Disk Management” under “Storage”.
• run “diskmgmt.msc” to load Disk Management directly.

Step 2: right-click on the target partition and select “Format…” from the context menu.

Step 3: in the format wizard, specify the volume label, file system, and allocation unit size. Then click “OK” to go on.

Step 4: Disk Management will give a prompt saying all data will be erased. Press “OK” to confirm the change.

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.