Can Data Be Recovered After Formatting?

| Updated on March 27, 2024

Formatting is when all existing data in the hard drive are erased, creating space for new files by ensuring that it has a file system compatible with your device, making it in a good position for new data storage. 

People format hard drives for various reasons, such as recent changes to file systems. This occurs when you have changed between OS, this formatting allows your drives to function with the new OS. 

Finally, we get to format our drives if they get corrupted and become unusable. Drives can get corrupted by factors such as overheating, file corruption, or even firmware malfunction. 

Recovering Data After Formatting

The big question here and our primary concern in this article is whether you can recover your data after formatting. The answer is definitely yes, you can recover formatted USB drive, hard drive, or any other storage device.   

Hard drives are majorly divided into two parts, namely HDDs and SSDs. With their difference comes the difficulty of data recovery. 

Hard Disk Drives (HDDs) keep data by altering a part of themselves magnetically whenever data is written on them, making it possible to retrieve erased data. In simpler terms, the HDDs keep your information physically. 

On the other hand, solid State Drives (SSDs) use the TRIM command that helps them choose which data blocks are to be erased. This means that TRIM swipes the entire data block whenever you erase data since SSDs can only access blocks keeping the data, making it almost impossible to recover data from it. 

Formatting Methods

You can do formatting of data under two methods: 

  1. Quick format, which deletes files currently existing on the drive. This method recreates the file system. Your data at this point is still retrievable as long as you do not overwrite the data.
  2. Full format while being used on older OS could detect flawed systems and correct them. While it is still a reliable way to recover formatted data, recovering a fully formatted drive in the most recently developed OS is not possible using recovery software. This comes about because most of these newer OS updates delete data overwriting them with zeros, thus permanently removing all stored files.

Recovering Files from Formatted Hard Drives

To recover files formatted hard drive, you will need to use a recovery tool and recovery software. The best recovery software that you can use to retrieve your formatted data is Disk Drill by CleverFiles. 

Disk Drill Data Recovery comes with an intrinsic user interface that is easy to use and reliable and other features that make it the best. Disk Drill can recover many files types and several drives as its developers keep updating it.

You can find Disk Drill easily from its official website. You can easily navigate your way through the installation process from its easy-to-use interface.

Disk Drill has two scanning methods, i.e., quick scan and deep scan. A quick scan may not give all the files to be restored, and it takes a shorter time to scan. On the other hand, the deep scan takes much time to scan, yet it pulls out all files formatted and is easy to filter as well.

Recovering Data from a Formatted USB Drive

You can use two methods to recover data from a formatted USB drive or hard drive from your USB cable – the use of software or manual recovery.

This is how you can recover data from a formatted flash drive using Disk Drill data recovery software;

  • Step 1: Download the Disk Drill from its official website and install it on your computer.
  • Step 2: Insert your formatted flash disk into the computer
  • Step 3: Launch the disk drill and choose your USB device from the available disks. 
  • Step 4: Flash the Drive-by clicking search for lost data to initiate scanning so that it can recover files.
  • Step 5: Preview your files to see files that can be recovered and then select files to be restored. Always avoid overwriting. 
  • Step 6: Restore Files by clicking on the ‘recover’ option and selecting a storage location. 

How to Recover Data from a USB Hard Drive Using CMD

This option is only possible for Windows users only. You can follow the process again:

  1. Open a command prompt by typing ‘cmd’ on your windows search.
  2. Select run as administrator
  3. Type the word: chkdsk G: /f/x/r. Replace G with the drive letter of the formatted USB drive.
  4. Press ‘enter’ to finish the process.


Chitra Joshi

Content Writer & Marketer


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