Can You Recover Data From a Wiped Hard Drive? Here's How!

Can you recover data from a wiped hard drive?

Formatting and wiping are common methods to erase data, but they work differently. Formatting is a quick way to clear data from a hard drive, USB drive, or SD card by deleting files and resetting the file system. However, it doesn’t permanently remove the data—only the file system pointers are reset. This means the original data remains on the drive until it is overwritten, making it possible to recover with specialized tools.

Wiping, on the other hand, is a more thorough process. It permanently removes data by overwriting every part of the drive, ensuring that the data cannot be recovered. This makes wiping a better choice for situations where privacy and security are essential.

Can you recover data from a wiped hard drive? It is often still possible. Even though the data is erased and inaccessible, it remains on the drive until new data overwrites it. To maximize the chances of recovery, it is crucial to stop using the drive immediately after data loss to avoid overwriting the erased information. Continued use could result in the permanent loss of some or all of the data. Recovering overwritten files is much harder than wiping or formatting.

How to perform data recovery from wiped hard drive?

To ensure high success rate if you want to perform data recovery form a wiped hard drive, it is recommended to choose a professional data recovery software like AOMEI FastRecovery. Its 14 years of development expertise ensures the data recovery process is efficient and easy. With this tool, you can effortlessly cope with complex data loss scenarios.

 Why should you choose AOMEI FastRecovery to recover data from a wiped hard drive:

• User-friendly interface: The software offers an intuitive graphical user interface, making it effortless for all skill-level users. It also offers technical support in 24/7.

• Versatile functionality: The tool boasts high-speed and reliable data recovery from various storage media, including HDD, SSD, USB drives, and SD cards. It supports over 1000 types of data with recovering unlimited data, covering texts, photos, videos, audio, emails, and compressed files, among others.

• Wide compatibility: Compatible with almost all Windows versions, including Windows 11/10/8/7 & Windows Server. And it supports multiple file systems like NTFS, FAT32, exFAT, and ReFS, ensuring broad device compatibility.

• Performs well in complex cases: Recover data from formatted disks, system crash, encrypted drives, corrupted USB drives.

• Security assurance: Users can download the software without worrying about bundled software, and it guarantees a secure environment by refraining from displaying any malicious ads during usage.

Step 1. Install and launch AOMEI FastRecovery. Choose the exact partition or disk where your data lost and click Scan.

Step 2. Then, the recovery tool start to scan and search. lt will execute the “Quickly Scan" first for finding your deleted data fast, and then execute the “Deep Scan" for searching other lost data.

Step 3. Once the scan is completed, all deleted files, recycle bins and other missing files will be displayed. Please select the file you would like to recover and then click "Recover".

Step 4. Then, select a folder path to save your recovered files.

Step 5. Wait patiently for this process of recovering ends.

Other methods to recover data from a wiped hard drive

Can data be recovered from a wiped hard drive? Yes, you can ! In addition to the powerful software, AOMEI FastRecovery, there are 2 Windows built-in tools.

Method 1. Recover formatted HDD with System Backup and Restore

Recovering your data from a wiped hard drive is easy if you backed it up beforehand. Many third-party programs can recover data from a wiped hard drive, but we’ll show you how to do it with Backup and Restore, a free Windows tool. If you lost files, you can try this method.

Step 1. Go to Control Panel > System and Security > Backup and Restore (Windows 7).

Step 2. Click Restore my files.

Step 3. Click Browse for files > Select files you want > Next.

Step 4. Choose where you want to save the recovered files, then click "Restore."

Method 2. Use File History to recover from a wiped hard drive

File History is a Windows built-in application that creates incremental backups of files that can be recovered if they are unintentionally deleted or destroyed. You can recover deleted files from backups in Windows. When File History is enabled, it performs frequent backups of files in the Documents, Music, Pictures, Videos, and Desktop folders. If you have set up a File History backup drive, follow the steps below.

Step 1. Navigate to the Control Panel first, and click the File History.

Step 2. Find and click the Restore personal files on the left list.

Step 3. Restore target files. The deleted file will appear on your interface and then click the Restore.

Summary

Can you recover data from a wiped hard drive? The answer is positive. With AOMEI FastRecovery and 2 Windows built-in tools, you can easily recover data from a wiped or formatted hard drive with ease. This reliable tool can also help you to fix issues when you can’t see files or folders on external hard drive in Windows 10 and 11.