Ext hdd recover

[kingscurate]

Hi gents, for some reason some time back i formatted 2 ext hdd with some raw photo files on. Is there anyway i can recover these files. The hdd have been in use since with backups amongst other things.
Many thanks

 

[TVeblen]

Probably not. Most of the simple recovery programs (read: free) work by finding data in the sectors and rebuilding the files. But if the original data has been overwritten then it is gone.

Spinning hard drives do not record data in sectors sequentially, it is pretty random placement. So the odds that all the sectors that contain all the data that make up a single file are overwritten is small. Some old files still exist intact, some are partially recoverable, the rest are unrecoverable (gibberish).

There are data recovery firms that say they can do this work but the cost is extraordinary.

My suggestion is to try a free program like RECUVA and see what you can find, if anything. Forget about the rest.

 

[kingscurate]

Thanks fir that fella!!