Can anyone recommend any free software that is good for recovering files after an accidental quick format?

I did a bit of googling & theres a lot out there so I thought Id ask for some first hand experiences

Ive used one quite simply called Free Undelete, with some success.

Have a look on tucows, download.com and such there should be plenty of decent free ones, they all work on the same principles at the end of the day so whichever you choose should be able to help.

Just dont write any more information to the disk!

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http://www.pcinspector.de/file_recovery/uk/welcome.htm = win!

A tad fiddly but its pretty good (and free!).

pcinspector hasnt managed to recover file names - am I likely to be unable to recover file names? (recovering 50,000 unnamed files may be a little painful!)

Most file recovery programs Ive used always struggle with filenames, but instead opt to name the files with regards to their position on the disk.

Its a case of going through every single one im afraid.

Some should be able to recover files on a per directory basis, so its not as bad as it seems.

Also have a look on http://www.download.com, should be something there too., if nothing else you can go through the shareware proggies and see if any of them are some use.

Cheers guys.

Im just going through all these programs now

I dont quite understand how these pieces of software work. None of the software so far has found any "files", simply clusters of data. I have to say I dont understand file systems & file allocation tables, but I at least expected the software to be able to produce some coherent list of files I could simply save to another disk I lost around 10,000 MP3s in the "accident" but as long as I can retrieve the files then I can use the tags to rename the files.

Hopefully Ill find some software that is a bit more intelligent.

Ive hosted the one I used with some success on my webspace for you:

http://www.clocked0ne.co.uk/freeundelete.exe


A quick format, much like standard file deletion, should only mark the files on the FAT/NTFS tables for overwrite (which marks where the files are stored on the disc). The data itself should still be there on the drive, as long as you do not write any files to the drive.

ultimate boot CD has some undelete tools on there.  There is a windows version as well, but i prefer the DOS version myself

I downloaded a copy of R-Studio demo which found most my files with file & folder structure intact. I have jumped in the deep end & paid $49 for a license.

Will let you know how it turns out

i bought this ages ago but never used it.

http://www.easy-undelete.com/index.html


more than welcome to it.

cheers - will be in touch if R-Studio fails in its mission

recovered ~99% of my data - woohoo!

Would have been 100% if windows installation hadnt gone & copies a few files to the drive before I killed it!

thanks for the tips folk

Quote from: ISJX_Ianrecovered ~99% of my data - woohoo!

Would have been 100% if windows installation hadnt gone & copies a few files to the drive before I killed it!

thanks for the tips folk

post a link to the software etc for others to reference to in the future