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My old hard drive is corrupted and I want to salvage the files on it using a data recovery program I’ve downloaded. However getting the program to read it is difficult. Do I need to reformat the hard drive? When I go to reformat it says this will erase all data on the disk, but according to other websites I’ve read it should be fine and I should still be able to salvage files. Which is correct?

Best reply by Tony RB:

If you do a full format, all the data on the disk will be overwritten with the formatting data – and you will lose the data you want to retrieve.

There is a type of formatting called “quick format” but that erases all the folder data, and that means you will have even more problems finding the data you want.

You say getting the program to read it is difficult. If the hard drive is failing, then you will have enormous problems getting any program to work right.

If the only problem is corrupted folder structures, then a quick format *might* work to erase all of the corrupted data, leaving the other data. Then your data recovery program would have to scan the entire hard drive.

I use the free Recuva program from Piriform to recover data, but I don’t know how it would work in your situation. Recuva has the ability to scan all the hard drive sectors, it is an option. If you can get it to work, you will need another drive to have a place to copy the selected data.

http://www.piriform.com/recuva

Wikipedia article about Recuva:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Recuva

There are programs available that will read the data directly off the sectors of the hard drive and present it in hexadecimal format, but that doesn’t mean you can make enough sense out of the data to be able to recover it. The better programs also cost money.

Monday, March 8, 2010

Read the original question here
Should I reformat a hard drive before using a data recovery program?

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