How to Recover Formatted Hard Drive for Free

Why did you format the hard drive?

There are several reasons why you might need to format a disk. When you format a disk, the operating system deletes all recorded information from it, checks the disk to ensure that all sectors are reliable, marks bad sectors, and creates an internal address table for locating information later. In short, you need to format a disk before you can use it.

This can be useful in many cases:

- If you're selling or giving away your computer, you should format the hard drive to ensure that all personal data is removed. - If you're upgrading to a new hard drive, you can format the old one and use it for extra storage. - If you're upgrading to a new system, you'll need to format the disk to make it compatible with the new computer system or device. - If your hard drive is having issues, formatting it may resolve the problem.

Of course, formatting the hard drive will erase all data on it, so make sure to back up any important data before proceeding.

How to Format a Hard Drive

The first step in formatting a hard drive is to open your computer's settings and access the disk management tool. This will allow you to view all drives connected to your computer, including any internal or external storage devices. Depending on your operating system, you may have several different disk and partition management tools available.

Once you've identified the drive you want to format, select it and choose a file system. Most modern systems support several formats, such as FAT32 or NTFS. It's important to choose a format that's compatible with your existing computer system, as well as any new devices you might connect to it in the future.

The basic steps for formatting a hard drive, flash drive, or another type of storage medium are usually the same: connect the disk to your computer, open the formatting software of choice, and follow the on-screen instructions to complete the process.

Can a formatted hard drive be recovered?

Can a formatted hard drive be recovered? The short answer is yes – data can be recovered from a formatted hard drive using professional data recovery tools. While formatting a hard drive deletes all existing files and other data on the disk, it does not completely overwrite or remove this information. Instead, it reorganizes the location of this data, making it readable for most data recovery utilities.

Several factors can influence the success rate of data recovery after a hard drive formatting, including the type of format used and how recently it was performed. Certain types of formatting might offer better chances of recovery than others, and if you regularly back up important information, you might be able to restore files lost due to formatting.

If you need to recover data from a formatted disk, there are several tools and methods available depending on your situation. Some options include using specialized data recovery software, seeking professional data recovery services, or attempting to restore information yourself by rebuilding the hard drive's partition table.

Ultimately, whether data can be recovered after formatting depends on many different factors – so if you've lost important information due to a formatted hard drive, it's best to use a data recovery tool or consult with a data recovery specialist for advice specific to your situation.

How to Recover Data from a Formatted Hard Drive Using Data Recovery Software

Many users fail to back up data before formatting, so you need to know how to recover formatted disk without backup. Data recovery software can help you restore data from a formatted hard drive on Windows and Mac computers.

With continuous data recovery research and development, data recovery software has been helping global users recover from deleted, formatted, and inaccessible data for over a decade. It is regarded as one of the top data recovery solutions, renowned for its user-friendliness, rapid deep scanning, high data recovery success rate, and swift customer support.

Learn how to recover formatted SD card.

To recover data from a formatted hard drive using the Data Recovery Wizard tool, follow this three-step guide:

On Windows 11/10/8/7:

Note: To ensure a higher chance of successful data recovery, install the data recovery tool on another disk, not on the formatted one.

Step 1: Run the Undelete Wizard. Select the formatted hard drive partition and click “Scan”.

Step 2: The formatting hard drive recovery software will start scanning all the lost data and files. After the scan, you can click "Filter" to filter specific file types and quickly locate the files you need. Alternatively, you can click "Search for files or folders" to select the data you want to recover.

Step 3: Preview the scanned files. Select the ones you want to recover and click on “Recover.” Choose a new location to save these files and then click “OK.”

On a Mac:

Step 1: Search for the Lost File

Select the disk location where you want to search for lost files (it can be an internal HDD/SSD or an external hard drive), and then click the “Search Lost Files” button.

Step 2: View the scan results

The program will immediately scan the disk volume you select and show pictures, files, documents, audio, video, and email on the left.

Step 3: Select the files and recover them.

Click to preview the data and then hit the “Recover” button to get them back.

How to use Data Recovery Services to recover a formatted hard drive

If a formatted recovery tool fails to retrieve files from your formatted hard drive, don't panic! Data recovery services are available to assist you in getting your data back. You can also consult professional experts on data recovery tools to initiate the process. With expert help, you can recover your data and get back to work.

Data Recovery Services

Contact our experts for a free evaluation.

Consult with our Data Recovery Specialists for one-on-one manual recovery services. After a free diagnosis, we can offer the following:

• Repair damaged RAID structures, unbootable Windows OS, and corrupted virtual disk files (e.g., .vmdk, .vhd, .vhdx)
• Recover/repair lost partitions and repartitioned drives
• Recover formatted hard drives and fix raw drives (including BitLocker encrypted drives)
• Fix disks turned into GPT protected partitions

Conclusions

There are several different ways to recover files from a formatted hard drive. If you have a backup, you can restore your files from the backup. If you don't have a backup, you can attempt to recover your files with the best hard drive data recovery software, Data Recovery Wizard.

Data Recovery Wizard is a powerful tool for retrieving lost data, but there are conditions. The sooner you attempt recovery, the more likely it is that you'll get your data back. How can you protect your data 100% compared to other recovery methods? Obviously, regularly backing up your hard drive is the most reliable method.

Data backup can be as simple as copy and paste. But when it comes to backing up large hard drives, you need something automated and intelligent. Choose a free backup software to create a disk backup that's easy, fast, and convenient. With real-time backup, you can restore your data anytime it's lost. Most importantly, the success rate of data recovery from a backup is 100%. Develop good backup habits and secure your important work documents, photos, videos, and music for a worry-free digital life.

Frequently Asked Questions on Recovering Files from Formatted Hard Drive in UTF-8 Encoding

Here are more guides on how to recover data from a formatted hard drive. If you have any of these issues, read on, you might find your answer.

How to recover formatted hard drive on Mac?

Recover Formatted Hard Drive on Mac:

Step 1: Select the disk location from where you lost data and files (it can be an internal HDD/SSD or a removable storage device), and then click on the “Scan” button.

Step 2: The software will instantly scan the disk volume you have chosen and display the scanning results in the left pane.

Step 3: From the scan results, select the files you want to recover and then click the "Recover Now" button to get them back.

How to recover folders from formatted hard drive?

If you accidentally formatted a hard drive with important data on it, you can use a data recovery program to retrieve folders from the hard drive after formatting.

Step 1: Run the Tool – Data Recovery Wizard. Under 'Select Location', choose 'Select Folder'. Browse to the location where you lost your folder and click 'OK' to start scanning.

Step 2: You can search for the target folder, or use the filter feature to look for specific file types within the folder.

Step 3: You can preview the recovered folder. Then, click “Recover” and select a new secure location on your computer to save the recovered data.

How to recover formatted external hard drive?

We would recommend you to try using a hard drive recovery software to restore files from formatted external hard drive.

Step 1: Connect the external hard drive to your computer.

Step 2: Run the tool – Data Recovery Wizard to scan the external hard drive.

Step 3: Preview the recovered files from the scan results.

Step 4: Click “Recover” and specify a secure location to save the recovered files.

4. Can files from a formatted SD card be recovered?

Recovering data from a formatted SD card is just as simple as recovering data from a formatted internal hard drive. You just open the data recovery tool, select the SD card to scan, and then recover files from formatted SD card.

5. How to recover backup data from a formatted hard drive?

On macOS:

If you backed up your Mac files with Time Machine, you can restore them from the reformatted drive by following these steps:

Step 1: Connect the Time Machine backup disk to your Mac.

Step 2: Open a Finder window in the folder that contained the missing file.

Step 3: Open Time Machine and find the file you want to restore.

Step 4: Press the space bar to preview the file.

Step 5: Click Recover to restore the items.

On Windows:

Windows has different backup and restore features. Here, we'll show you how to recover files from a formatted hard drive using File History in Windows 10:

Step 1: Click in the search box and type “File History.” Click “Restore your files with File History” from the search results.

Step 2: The File History window will open, displaying all backed-up files and folders. You can preview the files here to find the correct version you want to restore.

Step 3: Select the files you want to restore, then click the green arrow to restore the file.

Step 4: During the recovery, there might be a name conflict. Depending on your need, you can choose to "Replace the file in the destination folder," "Skip this file," or "Compare information of the two files."

How to recover formatted hard drive using CMD?

You can use the Windows File Recovery tool via command line to restore data from a formatted hard drive.

Step 1: Open the Microsoft Store, search for, and install the "Windows File Recovery" app.

Step 2: Launch the Windows File Recovery tool and start the process of recovering deleted files using the following syntax:

The basic command line is: winfr source-drive: target-drive: [/switches].

For example: winfr C: D: /n \Users\Documents\test.docx

Step 3: Thereafter, you can proceed to recover data from formatted hard drive by following the on-screen instructions.