Data Recovery from previous OS

[Callum]

We recently formatted a staff laptop, taking it from XP to 7. Before doing so we backed up all of the documents, pictures, etc., to a 64GB USB stick (which the staff provided). They've now come back to us after trying to access the data on the USB stick and the USB stick seems to have become corrupt; only folders and files from A to C are listed (everything else just doesn't exist), and the files that do exist are all corrupt. The laptop hasn't really been used since the formatting, so is it possible to recover the majority of the files using some form of file recovery freeware? I've tried Recuva but it didn't seem to detect files from the previous installation. Can anybody please recommend some freeware we can use to recover files from a previous Windows installation to an external drive?

[Steve21]

Recuva or TestDisk (Generally you'll need TestDisk to recover the partition before Recuva will work sometimes)

 

Should also work on the USB drive which might be easier (TestDisk first again), as that hasn't had a new partition on it

 

Steve

[koryo]

Recuva or TestDisk (Generally you'll need TestDisk to recover the partition before Recuva will work sometimes)

 

Should also work on the USB drive which might be easier (TestDisk first again), as that hasn't had a new partition on it

 

Steve

 

As you mentioned Testdisk to recover the partition, you could also try PhotoRec instead to recover the underlying data, regardless of the partition?

 

PhotoRec - Digital Picture and File Recovery

[Michael]

This is going to be practically impossible - the hard disk will have been formatted as well as overwritten with new OS/application data.

[difinity]

I've had some success with EaseUS recovery in the past. Might be worth trying the free trial to see if it can find the files.

EaseUS Data Recovery Wizard - EaseUS Data Recovery Software to Recover Lost Files Back

[Callum]

Running PhotoRec on the drive now and it seems to be recovering a lot of images (I've specified to only recover JPEG/PNG). Only issue is now they'll have to put everything back into folders.