Unformat Recovery
With tools like FDISK and others making it extremely easy to perform formatting operations, it is understandable when cases of accidental formatting become more common. All it takes is the tap of a key, and the contents of an entire drive become inaccessible. This is a nightmarish situation, and can easily happen if a user is not on their toes when using potent utilities like FDISK. This is not even to mention all the other avenues of failure that hard drives can suffer from. Hard drives remain the weakest link in the hardware chain to this day, and are frequently the source of both hardware and software failures. These failures can range from the annoying loss of personal data, to the devastating loss of important business or financial related information.
In the case of an accidental formatting of data, it can be very important that the data is restored as soon as possible. This is can be very much the case in corporate settings, when routine maintenance on drives potentially goes awry. Luckily, unformat recovery is not at all difficult, and if done promptly, can completely restore lost information on that drive. The key factor when assuring that all data is eventually restored is the integrity of that data. After an accidental formatting, ensure that nothing further is done to that drive until an unformat recovery is performed.
The majority of operating systems do not actually erase data when asked to delete files or perform a format. Actually erasing data is very time consuming, and as an architectural design choice, most systems simply wait until more space is needed, at which time they overwrite the old data. This must be prevented at all costs when valuable information has been accidentally formatted or deleted. To prevent this situation from occuring, simply shut down the system until ready to perform unformat recovery.
What tools are best used under these circumstances? A tool like TestDisk or File Recovery Wizard can very easily be used to remedy the situation. TestDisk, as an open source community project, has none of the licensing restrictions of commercial products. This means that TestDisk is able to provide a product packed with features, and at no cost. TestDisk can perform standard file recovery, RAW recovery, and tougher jobs like unformat recovery.
Take a formatted drive and connect it to another computer that has TestDisk loaded on it. All the user must do is select the drive in question while using TestDisk, and have TestDisk do a scan. In RAW recovery mode, TestDisk runs over the entire drive, finding individual files and building a map of them. When this map is complete, it is added to the drive, allowing the operating system to again browse through the files.
Filed under: Unformat Recovery