Maintain File Structures from a formatted recovery

[guym]

Hi,
I have an external Windows hard drive that was been accidentally formatted. Is it possible with data recovery software to recover files with the original file structure and file names?

[lcoughey]

I suggest R-Studio or R-Explorer. Just be sure to save the recovered data anywhere but to the source drive.

[guym]

so it is possible to get all the index data from a formatted disk? I was playing with EaseUS which was able to find the files fairly quickly but the file structure was lost. I did also used R-Studio but the scanning functionality is a lot slower than EaseUS. I cancelled both scans. just wanted to try them out. Output from the scanning is not as obvious with R-Studio. Need to mouse hover over the sector blocks to see the data files. From what I saw the file structure was not there also.

[lcoughey]

EaseUS sucks. R-studio scans for MFT and INDX records to reconstruct a file tree. You can stop and continue the scan as you want, allowing you to take a look and see if it has found what you are looking for already.

[lcoughey]

When you say formatted, the drive is now showing a blank partition?

[guym]

yes. My son connect the external hard drive to his phone and therefore he proceeded to format hard drive to Andriod O/S. Also find with R-Studio i find it loses USB connection with the hard drive.

[lcoughey]

Depending on the file system used by the android format, there could be substantial writing throughout the drive. R-studio does not control the USB port...any instability would be system related, not application.

[guym]

what do you mean by " substantial writing throughout the drive"?

[lcoughey]

Different files systems write their file tables differently. Some write more than others.

[guym]

The R-studio scan, I could see it was finding files but it is not obvious where scan output is displayed. Do you just mouse hover the sector block grid to see the file details?