Recover windows reload hard drive

[Greg B]

I have a hard drive that had some data on about 2 years ago and I have had to reload Windows XP due to being seriously infected by a virus. Is there a limit to how many times you can format a hard drive, reinstall windows and still access files with Recover my files under the recover drive? I think I had to reload Windows about 3 times on this hard drive.

Thanks,

Greg

[GDH]

Hi,

A deleted or missing file will stay on a hard drive up until such time as it is overwritten (or partially overwritten to an extent where it becomes corrupt and cannot be repaired) by new data.

The more that you use a computer, there more that new data gets written to the disk, both by you (saving new files) and the Windows Operating System (as part of its normal operation). Where this new data is saved is effected by many things, including;

1. how large your har drive is
2. what operating system is being used
3. whether you turn our computer on and off after each use
4. etc.

If you were to accidentally format your drive and then reload windows, you could do this 1000 times and expect still to get 95% of your user data back. Why? because the new installation of Windows goes at the start of the drive, where the old installation was - so the data you are overwriting is of no significance.

But if you were to use this computer heavily after the deletion, chances are you would be stomping over the deleted material and the amount you could recover would be reduced.

At the end of the day, you will not know how much you get back until you try. So run Recover My Files in evaluation mode and preview what you can find. Then make the decision about whether it is worth purchasing an activation key and saving the results.

Good luck.