I formatted an HDD with my Bitcoin Wallet, anyway to recover it?

[BadFrog]

werecoverdata.com

I used this server to recover data from an Iphone that was fell and was ran over by a car ( don't ask for details lol). It costed me $500 but this is a professional service. This is more for enterprise businesses but how important is that bitcoin I had to drop off/send in the Iphone for repair and i could see a memory chip that was bent and they were still able to recover.

 

[notb]

It's also pretty hard to accidentally format a hard disk. I'd say the difference in difficulty is academic at that point, and honestly, you are looking for a jab at bitcoin where there is none.

I doubt people accidentally format drives a lot.
What they do is: they have a mess in their files and when they have to do a format, they don't know if there is something important or not. And they don't have time to check those hundreds of GBs.
If you've grown up on a Linux, you should have good habits when it comes to folder structure.
Actually, if you're on Windows and you use it as Microsoft recommends (libraries: documents, photos, music etc), it's still not bad.
But this is not how people use Windows. They keep most files on the desktop and when it fills up, they make a folder like "old_desktop" and move everything there. Or they put files directly on C:. And so on.

And I'm not looking for a jab at bitcoin by all means. I'm looking for a jab at the good old stupidity.

You just stated the reason with your last statement. I do that all the time on different machines I control. It is a legit circumstance.

The "why" remains. The real "why" - not the "because I can" kind.
Why format a drive you intend to use further? I don't get that. I don't think I've ever quick-formatted a drive beside installing an OS.

You're assuming a lot.

Work habit.

That people care if family see what's on the disk, that the disk is given to family or sold or whatever, that the time to erasure is worth the security of the data, a lot of assumptions man...

But here I've hardly assumed anything. I built a decision tree covering all possibilities. If you plan to give the disk away, you won't find any circumstances that could support quick formatting. Seriously, give it a thought.
If you don't care if your family sees your files, just give them the disk. Why format at all?
But what happens when they decide to sell or throw it away? Will they sanitize it?

BTW: quick formatting is also usually not recommended/not allowed in corporate environments. If your company has a security policy, you can check what it says. Mine forbids formatting in general (it's locked in Windows).

At home I'm also rather strict when it comes to data. Everything private is encrypted, I change my passwords regularly, I don't give them away. I don't let my girlfriend use my accounts on our computers. Of course I have multiple backups and so on. I find all these to be pretty basic stuff...

 

[commission3r]

try a program called Recover My Files
i used it to recover my photo collection after a full format
it is an old program
good luck

 

[R-T-B]

The bottom line notb is a full format takes a long time, and if you do not care who sees whats on the disk or the disk remains in your control, it is often a legit action to do a quick erase during reinstall. At least you start with an uninflated mft this way (NTFS only).

It really is that simple. It's a simple matter of the value of your time vs the value of the data.

 

[Hockster]

Try GetDataBack - I have very high recovery rates when use it

Edit -May need to set options to - excessive scan,recover lost files,recover deleted files and untick quick scan

I've used GetDataBack before and it's performed brilliantly. Just keep the drive you want to recover out of use until you do the recovery.

 

[LabRat 891]

I don't normally recommend reaching out outside TPU but, this is pretty serious...

Find and contact LordXeb @ ExtremeHW (Former OCNer).
He's super-enthusiastic and professional when it comes to drive hardware and data recovery.

PSA: Modern SMR drives act more like SSDs. Deleted data may not be recoverable.

Hello everyone, I wanted to give everyone a heads up on this. Modern hard drives with SMR have TRIM enabled on them. Yes, that TRIM that is found in SSDs. If you delete data it may not be recoverable, at all. Overwritten, deleted, etc it doesn't matter. The data may be gone pretty quick and retur...

extremehw.net

Oh I do more than just side recovery. I do clean room work, firmware repair, file system reconstruction, data deletion recovery. I also do RAID recoveries as well. I deal with a lot of badly degraded drives too. Currently learning about the newer drives and working on SSDs. BTW, I would say over half of SSDs are not recoverable either do to no support, severe firmware/controller failure or just straight up dead NAND. Monolithic recovery is a whole other specialty.

He'd probably be happy to help a member of the community even, from outside of OldOCN/EHW.

 

[ir_cow]

@LabRat 891 you are a few years late to this party