14/08/2014

How to recover data from a hard drive, USB or memory card formatted or damaged

How to recover data from a hard drive or memory card formatted or damaged


Update: Redo backup and recovery is the definitive solution for these purposes. It is a CD or bootable USB in seconds on any computer that includes Photorec recovery applications, utilities backup, editing partitions, etc etc.

Have you formatted the card of the digital camera by mistake? Your brother formatted the drive of your computer to reinstall Windows by mistake, erasing your valuable data? The removable disk fell you and now your computer is stubbornly not read it? One of these programs may be the solution to your problems. It is not the first disk recovery, and will tell you my "secret".

The other day a friend left me a portable hard drive that had dropped to the ground, and when he went to connect it, Windows indicated to him that the unit had no format; If I wanted to format it (with the hit the FAT they had damaged). And of course, mistakenly I formatted it also. And of course, he had not made the relevant backup...

So now I'm with a disc that has trouble reading its content, and has also been formatted. But not all is lost; While the hard disk does not have excessive damage that keep you from work, have programs that they allow us to recover data and partitions even if the disk has been formatted.

Recover my files from GetData



It is without doubt the most powerful and complete, and contrary to the program from Easeus, this informs you at all times of the process, and if the drive formatted by mistake was NTFS, has a 100% recovery rate (files and folders).





The program gives you two options; either recover loose files deleted in error, or recover a complete unit, well because it has been formatted by accident, or because it has received a blow and the unit is not accessible (Windows asks you if you want to format it), etc.

It should be noted that these programs do not make miracles (or almost); If the unit no longer works mechanically by hit (do typical zoom by rotating the disc, or heads have been damaged, refusing even to access tracks, typical noise of rattling), the only way to recover the data would be to open it in a recovery lab data, which have systems to extract the contents of the array (an expensive process).
"Recover my Files" detects the file system, by scanning the hard drive looking for copies of the file allocation table, for then scan all blocks to search for files.

It allows us to retrieve both the original files and folders, and I have seen that it is faster and more reliable than the Easeus data recovery Wizard.
The interface is also more complete, although the trial version does not allow you to save any file detected, and does not support linux file systems (ext2/ext3), although this section is planned to incorporate it.
The standard version allows you to recover files from Windows (FAT and NTFS) systems for €70. An option to take into account.


Free Data Recovery Wizard , recovers 1 GB for free



One of the simplest to use is the "Data recovery Wizard" of Ease use, which in its free version allows us to recover up to 1 GB of data, more than enough if what we want to retrieve only the important data; as photos and documents of the family. Do not have malware and viruses, you can install it quiet:



In case of accidental format, we will give you the option "Complete recovery" or complete recovery, as shown in allows to recover files from formatted disks, and with great success, as I have seen.
In the next step allows you to indicate what type of files you are interested in recovering, and it is important to leave "Ignore bad sectors" to make it faster, as in the case of a disk hard damaged by a blow strong, could take many hours in check (in each bad sector repeated several times the reading).

Easeus Recovery Wizard looking for files in all of the hard disk.

Its main features:
  • 1 GB of free data recovery.
  • Specify file types before recovery to find files more quickly lost.
  • Saves the results of the previous search for a continuous recovery.
  • Faster search due to the omission of sectors damaged automatically.
  • File recovery due to formatting accidental, even having reinstalled Windows *.
  • Recovery from disk after a coup.
  • Recover files after a partitioning error or a hit.
  • Works on Windows 2000/XP/2003/Vista/2008/Windows 7.
  • Recovery from deleted or damaged partitions.
  • Recovering files from dynamic disks.
  • Recovering files from Linux systems.
  • Recover data with the names and original folders.
  • Recovery of deleted files from the Recycle Bin.
  • Recover documents from office, images, videos, music, email, etc.
  • Recovery from hard drives, USB drives, memory cards, camera cards, and any other storage system.
  • Supports the file systems FAT12, FAT16, FAT32, NTFS/NTFS5, EXT2/EXT3.

The free open source alternatives
What I am going to say open source that not I been told already... among their many advantages is that it tends to be cross-platform, in particular these programs are to:
  • DOS/Win9x
  • Windows NT 4/2000/XP/2003/Vista/2008/7
  • Linux
  • FreeBSD, NetBSD, OpenBSD
  • Sun Solaris
  • Mac OS X

TestDisk: Recovering partitions
In the event that only want to recover the files location table; FAT, this other program called TestDisk allows us to recover the partition where it has been damaged by the effects of a hard drive failure, a virus, or any other problem.
Some of the symptoms of a faulty partition include:
  • Error message "Error in the reading of the unit; Retry, cancel?
  • The file system appears empty, or with file names with weird characters.
  • Windows asks you if you want to format the hard disk.
  • "Sector not found" messages.

This program accepts hard drives of different operating systems, like Mac, Windows, Linux, and although it works under a command window, it is very capable and easy to use.


We have at our disposal a very full use tutorial, with step by step pictures.

To download it, on the left we have the corresponding 'download'. If you have served, consider donating them some of your Super money program (and in addition to open source, so anyone could improve it).

Photorec: Recover photos and free files *

This other program open source for Windows and Linux from the same CGSecurity allows us to recover all our files from drives FAT, NTFS, HFS + & EXT2/EXT3 (linux) free, and is cross-platform.

Here we have a step by step manual, illustrated, so lose you the fear of the command window... is not so difficult!!
I have not tried it, but it seems very complete and capable. If you used,give them some money to improve it even more!

Finally, a note: to erase a hard disk without its being possible to recover your data, it is best to use some program that format all hard disk filling it with zeros, as the PartitionMagic and Gparted open source.

Good luck in your precious data recovery!