Recovering formatted partitions (disks, memory cards, USB flash drives etc.) is a very special case with multiple “ifs” and “buts” making the result a bit iffy. If your device recoverable after a format? Read along to find out!
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Posts tagged unformat
Recovering Formatted Disks: Is It Recoverable?
Can I Unformat a Memory Card?
Memory cards can be often recovered with the same data recovery software used to recover hard drives. However, much depends on how the memory card was formatted. Quick or full format, version of Windows used to format the card, PC or appliance such as digital camera, and even brand and model of a digital camera matter a lot.
When formatting a memory card, the system effectively initializes the storage, preparing the card to store data. Formatting a memory card will effectively delete all files. The question is whether or not the files lost during the format operation are recoverable.
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Can I Unformat That Disk? The Details
Format Operations in Windows 95, 98, ME, NT4, Windows 2000 and Windows XP
As you can see from the table published in Part I of this article, formatting any type of media in Windows 95, 98, ME, NT4, Windows 2000 and Windows XP is never destructive. Indeed, these operating systems do not zero disk data even when performing the full format operation; instead, they verify the disk by simply reading the sectors instead of writing to them. This was changed in later versions of Windows to facilitate tighter security. Also note that even TRIM-enabled SSD drives are fully recoverable when formatted by one of these older operating systems. This is due to the fact that the TRIM command is actually not supported by any of these systems, so SSD controllers do not have a chance to destroy your data after Windows formats the disk clean.
Can I Unformat That Disk? Cheat Sheet
Accidental format operations happen all the time with hard disks, SSD’s, memory cards and USB flash drives. In many cases, the original information stored on these devices is not erased, and can be successfully recovered by a simple file recovery tool (e.g. The Undelete). The entire media can often be unformatted or restored to its original, pre-format state by using a disk recovery tool (e.g. HDD Recovery Pro).
However, how much data, if any at all, is recoverable from formatted media depends on many variables. The following table shows whether your files are likely to be recoverable.