Cause of loss · formatted disks
Most accidental formats are the quick sort, which lays a fresh, empty index over files that have not moved at all, and of the ways to lose data few are kinder. A full format left to run to the end is a different case altogether, and you deserve to hear that before you post anything to us from Maidenhead rather than afterwards.
Describe the fault to an engineer
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| The signs | The likely cause | Start here |
|---|---|---|
| Windows asked to format it and you agreed | The old index has been replaced with an empty one | Stop there; your files sit beneath |
| Explorer opens an empty volume with all space 'free' | Just the catalogue changed; everything it pointed to remains | Put nothing on that disk |
| A full format left to complete | Since Vista every sector is given a zero by a full format, and that is genuinely lost | Candidly: unrecoverable |
| A full format stopped midway | Whatever the zeroing never reached can survive | Cancel it, then power down |
| diskpart clean | That erases only the partition table; the volumes underneath survive | Strong prospects |
| diskpart clean all | Writes zeros across the entire disk, just as a full format does | Candidly: unrecoverable |
| A quick-formatted SSD | TRIM has run; the controller is emptying its own cells now | Take the power off now |
Nothing becomes chargeable until you have said yes to it. Each item takes a case number of its own the moment it arrives, an engineer establishes what has actually failed, and you are given a candid view of which files stand a realistic chance of returning. The single quote that follows is fixed, written down, and costs nothing.
Quick or full, clean or clean all, and did it run to the end or did somebody cancel it? The plan follows from those answers, so they are settled before any promise is made.
On the image, whatever survives of the previous file system is dug out from beneath the replacement and rebuilt; where enough records remain, names, dates and the folder structure return with the contents.
Where no structure survives, file types are pulled out of the image by their byte signatures, contents intact, with filenames restored wherever the remaining clues allow.
Nothing is billed until you have seen the recovered file list in full and told us to go ahead. What comes back arrives on new media, with the return journey at our cost, and the case stays open at this end until you have opened every file yourself.
Take this as the plain position: a disk that has only been quick-formatted leaves you well placed. Let a full format run to its end, or set clean all going in diskpart, and nothing is left to search for, since every sector has by then been zeroed on purpose in each Windows released since Vista. Where a firm says it can reverse a completed full format, ask it to describe the method.
Nothing had been written to the disk after the mistake, and that is what saved it. Two identical 2TB disks sat in the one tower, and the fitter quick-formatted the family archive rather than the spare. The original file table survived, so every folder returned under its own name.
It leaves nearly everything. On a hard disk the quick option replaces only the index, so the contents never move from the sectors they occupied; provided nothing has been written since, whole folder trees usually return intact.
A full format that runs to the end does, because Windows has written a zero into every sector since Vista. The quick sort does not, and that difference decides most cases.
Stop using it, shut it down, and have it imaged. Anything written after the mistake lands on files that were still recoverable.
No: on an SSD a quick format usually triggers TRIM, and the controller begins emptying cells within seconds of it. Pull the power and telephone us, because among format cases this is the one counted in minutes.
Each further power-up asks more of a drive that has already begun to fail. Open the case first and let the free diagnosis tell you what is left.