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I have formatted my hard drive, now I wonder if it is possible to recover the files while I have reinstalled windows on the same drive and been using it for a few weeks and almost filled the hard drive with files?

I also have this question, is deleting all files and quickly formatting the hard drive essentially do the same thing? Like, deleting the files and quickly formatting the hard drive do not fully delete the file but it only allows the operating system to use the space occupied by the deleted files.

Thanks

mnish
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1 Answers1

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is deleting all files and quickly formatting the hard drive essentially do the same thing?

Similar actions, but not the same results.

For an SSD that supports TRIM, it's highly likely that both operations TRIMed the data itself, so it no longer exists and cannot be recovered by any means.

For an HDD, both deleting a file and a quick format of the disk will leave the file's data on the disk, so that specialized recovery programs can still find it, on condition that it wasn't overwritten.

harrymc
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