Help me, I did a huge mistake.

[Josefsson]

Hi. I don't know if this falls under this category but I'll try.
My computer crashed today (unknown reasons) so I reinstalled Windows 7 (Home Edition)
And when I was in my computer again ofcourse all my files were gone, what I didn't think of was that all of my Photos are gone... And that I did not have a backup of them. The reinstall didn't create a "windows old" folder. Since I "knew" that I wouldn't be needing one...

Is there any way to restore those pictures?...

I'm begging for an answer, there are loads of family photos...

I'm a nut...

 

[FZ21Z]

I'm begging for an answer, there are loads of family photos...

Ouch, I feel you're pain, but if you clean installed?, which will have formatted your H.D, there's not a lot that can be done, sorry.

 

[Josefsson]

Alright... Thanks anyway, had to hear it.

Well, you learn by doing, I learned to start making backups of EVERYTHING!

Love this forum btw!

 

[karlsnooks]

josefesson,
don't panic yet. Stop using your computer this very minute. That format didn't really overwrite your harddisk. There is a good possibility that most of the data on your computer can be recovered. Now I'm not an expert in this area but there are those that are. If it was me, then I'd connect the drive to another computer and investigate the contents using PuppyLinux as a starter. I have't recovered such a hard disk problem in truly ages and back then I could use some of the advanced Norton Utilities (long gone of the face of the earth) to recover from even repartitioning and reformatting.

There are commercial shops will recover your info for you but they are not cheap and you should haggle with them about the price.

In the futurel, take advantage of the great (and I'm being honest) backup and restore feature of Win7. Backup and Restore is reachable via the control panel. I have a USB 250 gig external drive which I use for backups. You probably need something bigger Be aware that MS using compression and produces a .wim file which means that you don't need a 500 gig drive to backup a 500 gig drive.

 

[Staple Head]

there are programs that will search for lost files even on reformatted drives / partitions. you mostly will not get all of the files back, but you should get some.

 

[Thorsen]

Recuva - Undelete, Unerase, File and Disk Recovery - Free Download Recuva is one that I have seen mentioned.

 

[Thorsen]

The Portable Freeware Collection - Undelete Plus Undelete Plus is one that I have used in the past. Dont know if these will work on a formatted disc, but its worth a shot.

 

[FZ21Z]

That format didn't really overwrite your harddisk.

You might be in luck then if that's the case.

 

[Josefsson]

First of all I would like to thank you all for replying! Thanks alot!

I downloaded Recuva and tried it, worked like a charm, saved around 1k images, though it was kind of complicated and a wierd program it sure worked! Thanks alot alot alot !

Backing up atm!

 

[FZ21Z]

Pleased to hear that.