Recover data from formatted hard drive

Hi All,

Just want to know if there's any freeware application out there for recovering data from a formatted disk (through a operating system reinstallation). I have found a couple of trial versions but unfortunately even though they work fine, the applications only allow you to either save small files or just view the files without being able to save them.
To give you a background as to why i find myself in this situation. One of the laptops in our company recently had problems related to a corrupt windows installer file. Now after having tried to repair, unistalling and reinstalling the windows installer without any luck, i had no option but to reinstall the whole operating system. I even tried unistalling/reinstalling winXP SP2 using the recovery console but this didn't help either. I have always thought of myself to be a very careful person but somehow this time i missed one folder, which the user saved in the C: drive somehwhere. I never used the "files and system transfer wizard in XP" cause i onced used it to backup stuff and it somehow could not work properly. At least with a direct backup you can actually see the stuff being backed up immediately. I only backed up the user's profile, that is, desktop, my docs, archives etc. Now this turns out to be some very important information. We always tell users to save important data on the server but hey they never listen to us do they?

Your help is greatly appreciated!

Sbale

You can download the excellent Helix Live CD which contains forensic tools including Autopsy which can be used to recover deleted files.

hey there is another option which have always help me and i know it will help you too. just try and download getdataback you can check there site for the download but i used NTFS vasion and it works. GOOD LUCK!!!


ANY PROBLE I WILL GET BACK TO YOU

Hey Guys,

Here's a little tale.

I was leaving my lovers house one night and came upon a computer sitting by a pile of garbage. Knowing the resurrection power of Linux i took it home with me. Yet, a voice told me to do a data recovery on the HD after an hour of recovery, i discover my lovers neighbors aren't the sweet people i thought they were. My eyes burnt that night.

So, fellow reader when dumping old hard drives i recommend using a utilities that smoke the drive to a point of no recovery. Kill Disk is good and evidence eliminators works well.

lindows

My lover dumped me like a bad Kernel

At least you didn't get the Blue Screen of Death...