How it was lost · formatted or wiped
Accidental formats are almost always quick formats: a fresh, empty index dropped over files that never moved — and that's one of the kindest problems we see. A full format that ran to the finish is a different story, and we'd rather say so now, before the parcel leaves Exeter, than break it to you after diagnosis.
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| The error | What it usually means | Step one |
|---|---|---|
| 'Do you want to format it?' — answered Yes | The quick format has stamped a new, empty index over the last one | Stop here — the files sit below |
| Windows shows a bare volume, every byte 'free' | The old index is all that went — the data it pointed at hasn't moved | Write nothing else to it |
| A completed full format | Since Vista, full formats write zeros to every sector — that data is genuinely gone | Truthfully: not coming back |
| A full format stopped midway | Sectors the zero pass hadn't reached can survive | Cancel it and cut the power |
| diskpart clean | Only the partition map goes; every volume beneath stays put | Very good odds |
| diskpart clean all | Writes zeros end to end — same result as a full format | Truthfully: not coming back |
| Quick-formatted an SSD | TRIM has been triggered — the drive is erasing itself as you read this | Pull its power immediately |
Your device is logged under its own case number the day it arrives. An engineer finds the fault, tells you plainly what stands a real chance of coming back, and writes you one fixed quote. Nothing is charged for that look, nothing obliges you, and paid work starts only when you say so.
Full or quick? A clean, or a clean all? Stopped partway, or run to completion? Those answers decide the whole plan, so we settle them before making you any promises.
Working on the image, we locate the previous file system beneath the fresh one and piece it together — where that survives, filenames, folder trees and dates return with it.
Where nothing structural remains, we pull each file type from the image by its signature: content intact, names restored whenever the evidence allows it.
Before any fee falls due you see a full listing of everything recovered and approve it. Your files travel back on brand-new media, return postage on us, and the case stays open until you've confirmed everything opens on your own machine.
The honest version, printed where you can hold us to it: quick-format a hard disk and the odds favour you. Let a full format finish — or run diskpart clean all — and nothing is left to find, because every sector has been zeroed by design since Vista. If a firm claims it can recover a completed full format from an HDD, make them explain the mechanism.
Two identical 2TB disks in one tower, and the installer put the format on the wrong one — the family archive. Since not a byte was written afterwards, the old file table survived whole, and each folder came home under the name it had always had.
Generally, yes. On a hard disk, a quick format only replaces the index; the contents stay exactly where they were. If nothing new has gone on since, entire folder trees return routinely.
A finished full format does — Windows has zeroed every sector since Vista. A quick one doesn't. Nearly everything on this page hangs on that difference.
Get it powered down and imaged. Each new write after the slip overwrites files you'd otherwise have kept.
On an SSD a quick format normally fires TRIM too, and the drive starts erasing itself at once. Pull the power and ring us fast — of all format jobs, this one is measured in minutes.
Each power-up of a failing device takes more data with it. Open a case first — the look-over is free whichever way it goes.