How do I recover files after re installation of windows 7

Ayubjon · 12 May 2013

Recently my friends laptop was stolen and police did act very quickly and returned the laptop. But theft had re installed the Windows 7 already on that laptop. And now a friend of mine is asking me to help him to recover all the files that were there before re installation. So I wonder if it is possible to recover files? I know that during the re installation HDD was formatted. Maybe I will be able to recover some files from unchanged sectors of HDD? What software I need for that?

fireberd · 12 May 2013

You can try some of the free programs such as recuva but if the sector was overwritten there isn't much hope of recovering data. Programs available to the general public won't recover like the programs that for example police have. There are commercial companies that have recovery software that can probably do it but they are expensive (in the thousands of dollars).

This is a good lesson in why backups to some media external of the PC is needed. Nor for IF it is ever needed but for WHEN it is needed.

jayw · 12 May 2013

you may try some data recovery software, but I guess that the chances to recover all the files are low as reinstall will write quite a lot of files to disk, which may overwrite the space of lost files. The best way is to try free data recovery software to see whether files are recoverable. Here's a data recovery tutorial that one of my friend recommended to me last time when I deleted files but computer but then need those files back. It contains easy to follow steps, hope that it helps you in some way.

Layback Bear · 12 May 2013

Something else to consider. Was their information on the laptop that the thief stole and can use. Such as passwords, banking information, credit card information and or Paypal.

Ayubjon · 12 May 2013

Layback Bear said:

Something else to consider. Was their information on the laptop that the thief stole and can use. Such as passwords, banking information, credit card information and or Paypal.

No, it is all about family photos, some documents and etc. But some photos are old and they don't have another copy of them.

Mark Phelps · 12 May 2013

I can confirm, unfortunately, that data recovery apps have very mixed results in getting files back. I've not used recuva, but I have used the various Runtime Software apps, and while they work well, even they don't recover all the files.

Ayubjon · 18 May 2013

Yesterday I was able to recover some of the files from that laptop. For that I used Recuva portable version. It's a time consuming job and it took me hole day to finish it.
there are steps, in case if someone needs them.
1. I've lunched Recuva portable version from flash drive.
2. Scanned both c and d partition of hdd
3. recovered the files to external usb hdd.

Because Recuva recovered every possible file to usb hdd now they need to be sorted out.
thank you.

whs · 18 May 2013

Did you check whether there was a Windows.old folder. From that it would be easy to recover files.

Ayubjon · 18 May 2013

whs said:

Did you check whether there was a Windows.old folder. From that it would be easy to recover files.

Yes I did, they formatted HDD and reinstalled windows 7

whs · 18 May 2013

Ayubjon said:

whs said:

Did you check whether there was a Windows.old folder. From that it would be easy to recover files.

Yes I did, they formatted HDD and reinstalled windows 7

Hmm, some real experts were at work. Maybe that teaches your friend to make weekly images to an independent external drive that stays at home. With an image it is a 20 minute affair to reinstall the system and all files.