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Greetings, everyone. Please, how do I recover data/files after a clean installation on the disk?
I need a guideline and software/tool recommendations.
thank y’all in advance

5 Spice ups
2

If the drive wasn’t wiped but a clean install was put on top of it, depending on the free space, how much was and is used, your chances or recovery reduce.

You can use program like undelete to look for what can be recovered, but if the data has been overwritten with the new OS, you might not have much luck.

Whatever you do, don’t write any more to this disk if you want your chances to be higher.

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the drive has been formatted with new OS

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But how - full wipe, just a delete partition and reinstall.

Either way, since parts of the disk have now been overwritten, your recovery changes start to reduce.

I know this answer to this question, but why not restore from backups - the data you want is important, right?

5 Spice ups
5

You are going to want to create a bootable USB drive using a tool like Rufus. You must avoid installing anything else on the HDD. You will need to have something like Recuva or EaseUS’s Data Recovery Wizard to run from the USB drive to recover lost data.

4 Spice ups
6

yes, very important documents… its a domain a client PC. I didnt do any cloning or whatsoever… we have a centralized file server tho but the person using this always put important files on desktop and documents instead of keeping them on home folder or the shared drives… I didnt configure any folder redirection too

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So you didn’t do any checks before wiping a clients device, ensuring their data was central?

You’ve learnt a good lesson here.

You need them to stop writing data to the drive, take it off them otherwise you risk loosing any chances of recovery, though they are likely already very slim since the setup has been overwritten.

You then need to look at recovery tools like EaseUS undo to scan the drive and try to recover lost files.

Depending on the size of the drive, this process can take days and just as long to recover, even if the files are unreadable.

4 Spice ups
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If they are that critical, pull the drive and find a data recovery company. They will charge you $$ to get the files.

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Further, power down that device and do not use it. Even “regular” operations by the OS and saving new files are decreasing your odds of successful recovery by the minute.

3 Spice ups
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how will I execute a program on a USB during installation?

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I asked the client if his files are centrally saved and he said yes, I can go ahead and wipe off the disk.. I didnt personally check

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Using Rufus, you can install Windows or Linux on a bootable USB. When you boot to that USB, you can install other programs on it as needed.

2 Spice ups
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If it’s an SSD then recovery tools usually don’t work due to TRIM clearing unused space. If an HDD then see what can recover using a recovery tool.

3 Spice ups
14

Respectfully, extrapolating from the questions you’ve posed, anything you do personally from this point forward is likely putting any remaining data at further risk.

This situation seems to be well outside your area of expertise. The suggestions others are providing here are well meant but if these files are “very important” you cannot afford to monkey with it any longer. The drive needs to be handed off to someone who already has experience with data recovery.

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A simple theory is that if the data is not worth backing up, it is not worth the recovery…

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Yes, wanting to know what type of disk before giving it any consideration…

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I have save people so many times who have said exactly that. “Hey what about these, do you have these backed up? Oh man no! Thank you for checking!” Well over a dozen people.

Always double check them, because they often don’t know where they are saving.

One other thing to add to your checklist is bookmark backups. For example if using Firefox you want to back them up or export them somewhere so you can bring them back in.

Mistakes unfortunately happen but they are also the greatest teachers. You’ll won’t make that one again.

I had a coworker clone a hard drive in the wrong direction and blow away everything. There were no backups. It happens.

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But did you ask him if there are backups ??

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others have already shared some great suggestions,just be sure not to write anything to the drive before attempting recovery. Good luck!

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