The cause · a format was run
The calls sound much the same from anywhere in Hull and the East Riding. Someone pressed Format on the wrong disk. Nearly always it was the quick sort, which swaps the index and leaves the files exactly where they sat — as data loss goes, a mild version. A full format run to the end is another matter, and we would sooner say so on the phone than after the parcel reaches Leeds.
An engineer will take the details
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| The symptoms | What the fault is | What to try |
|---|---|---|
| Windows asked to format the disk and you agreed | A new blank index lies on top of the old one | Leave it alone. Your files are still beneath it |
| The drive opens empty and every byte reads as free space | Only the listing changed; what it pointed to is still in place | Write nothing more to it |
| A full format that completed | Vista onwards, a full format leaves a zero in each sector; zeros contain nothing | Nothing left to read |
| A full format halted part-way | The part the zero pass never reached is untouched | Stop it and pull the power |
| diskpart clean | Clears the partition table and nothing else; the volumes below stay put | Often recoverable |
| diskpart clean all | Zeros the whole disk, exactly as a full format run to the end does | Nothing left to read |
| A quick format on an SSD | TRIM has fired and the controller is already wiping cells on its own | Power off, right now |
Each item that arrives gets a case number the day it lands. An engineer looks at it and finds the real fault, and that costs you nothing. You are told in plain terms which files can come off the drive and which cannot. A price follows — one figure, written down. No work starts until you have seen it and agreed to it.
Which of the four was it — a quick format, a full one, clean, or clean all? And did it reach the end? That puts a hard limit on what can be read back, so the engineer settles that before anyone talks odds.
This is done on the image, never the disk. What remains of the old file system is lifted out from beneath the new one and put back together. If enough records are readable, the files return with their names, their dates and the folders they sat in.
When no structure is left at all, files are picked out by the header bytes their type begins with and pulled whole off the image. Anything that still points at a file gives it its name back.
You are not billed while you are still thinking. The list of what came off the drive goes to you first, and the invoice waits on your word. Files go home on media bought in for the job, with the postage back on us. We keep the job open until you have opened them on your own machine.
Put plainly: if all that ran was a quick format, the odds are good. If a full format finished, or clean all was typed into diskpart, there is nothing on the disk to look for — every sector was deliberately given a zero, and that has been Windows behaviour since Vista. Any firm claiming a finished full format can be undone should be made to explain how.
Two identical 2TB disks sat next to each other in one tower, and the one that got wiped held the family archive rather than the empty one. All a quick format does is redo the index. The files stay put where they were, and that is why it came back at all. Nothing else had gone onto the disk since, so the archive read out exactly as before.
Usually the lot. A quick format on a hard disk writes a new, empty index and stops there. The sectors are untouched. Your files are where you left them, under a catalogue that no longer lists them. Put nothing else on the disk and most folders come back with their names and dates.
Yes — but only a full format that reached the end. Since Vista, each sector gets a zero dropped into it on the way past. A quick format writes none. That one difference settles most jobs.
Shut the machine down. Do not use the disk again, and let an engineer image it first. Every file written from here lands on top of something that could have been read back.
No. Quick-format an SSD and TRIM usually fires, and the controller then clears the freed blocks on its own. Pull the power and phone us. Of all the format jobs that reach us, this is the one where waiting costs the most.
Leave it switched off. A failing drive has a limited number of starts in it, and each one spends a little more. The free diagnosis will say which files can be read.