Data recovery after quick format

[Captain]

Can anyone recommend some good software? So far I've tried Recover My Files and File Scavenger. Both have yet to recover ANY files at all. It seems all they're doing is displaying what's on my hard drives right now. wtf?

Basically, I made a big fucking bonehead move when I was going from Vista back to XP. There was an entire movies folder that I accidentally moved from the external (rather than copied) into my D drive. Another bonehead move was quick formatting the D drive when I ran XP for the first time. I should've just deleted the games folder and that's it, but I wasn't thinking.

Is it really possible to recover files from a quick format? It really doesn't seem like it for me so far. That movies folder was precious. The downloaded films are nothing, it's all my own video work over the past 2 years that I've lost instantly.

PS. I've installed the recovery programs on the external to avoid disk overwriting when scanning the D drive.

[SoM]

have you tried http://www.recuva.com/

[Captain]

Hmm, no I haven't. It doesn't mention anything about recovering formatted files, but I'll give it a try. Thanks.

Right now I'm having Power Data Recovery scan for all video files. In half an hour I'll find out if it saves me or not

[+JuggerNaut+]

http://www.experts-exchange.com/Storage/Q_20673277.html

[obsidian]

I hate experts-exchange with a passion. What kind of technical support forum requires registration to read the bloody content.

[SoM]

alot of em

[Captain]

I hate those damn sites too. But judging by the OP, that recovery question doesn't have much to do with SATA HDDs, XP, and format recovery.

PDR didn't do shit for me. File Scavenger on the other hand pulled up a bunch of files from the D drive. So far only a small fraction of my irreplaceables have been recovered. File Scavenger will run overnight but on the external itself. I'm seriously at my wit's end. If this doesn't work, I have no fucking clue what to do next

PS. Recover My Files is the biggest pile of shit in the world.

[^misantropia^]

I hate experts-exchange with a passion. What kind of technical support forum requires registration to read the bloody content.

Stupid indeed, but it can be circumvented (or at least, could; haven't tried it recently) by posing as the Google bot. A FF plugin to spoof the user agent string: https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/59

This works for actually quite a lot of sites that require some kind of registration.

[+JuggerNaut+]

I hate experts-exchange with a passion. What kind of technical support forum requires registration to read the bloody content.

uh, all you need to do is scroll down.

[+JuggerNaut+]

I hate those damn sites too. But judging by the OP, that recovery question doesn't have much to do with SATA HDDs, XP, and format recovery.

i realize that, but perhaps you should look at the answers posted. i didn't fucking link you there for nothing.

[Captain]

Thanks man, I didn't realize that. I'm gonna try out most of those.

[+JuggerNaut+]

[Captain]

Ok it seems so far File Scavenger 3.2 has been the most helpful program. Right now I only need to get back one more video. Some I had backed up to my laptop

Many of my downloaded movies and lots of older videos have gone *poof* but this has been a stern lesson.

I also got back my "received files" folder, but all of the files (jpg) need repairing.