Quick format recovery - Recover lost data after quick format

Posted by Tim to Data Recovery Tips on March 31st, 2017

I did a quick format on my 1TB external hard drive and latter realized a couple of documents were not backed up. Is there anyone that can help me to recover lost data after quick format? Since I have never encountered this problem before, I hope you can give me some advice. Thank you!

The first thing you must do is stop using the drive immediately and don't write any new data to the drive where you are planning on recovering data from it, otherwise, you will overwrite the lost data so that the lost data is diffcult to recover.

Generally, after the formatting, your files are not permanently gone from your drive, so there is still a chance to recover lost data after quick format as long as you have not overwritten the original data. To recover lost data after quick format, you need a professional format data recovery software to help you.

Free format recovery software

iBoysoft Data Recovery is a free format recovery software which can recover lost data after quick format on hard drive, external hard drive, USB flash drive, memory card, SD card, pen drive, etc. in Windows XP/Vista/7/8/10 and Windows Server 2016/2012/2008/2003.

Besides data recovery after quick format, iBoysoft Data Recovery can also recover deleted files even if emptied from Recycle Bin, recover lost data from RAW partition, recover lost data from inaccessible drive, recover lost data from deleted or lost partition, recover lost data from BitLocker encrypted drive, etc.

Tutorial to recover lost data after quick format with iBoysoft Data Recovery

Step 1: Download and install iBoysoft Data Recovery on your computer.

Step 2: Run iBoysoft Data Recovery and choose "Data Recovery" module.

Free format recovery software - iBoysoft Data Recovery

Step 3: Select the formatted partition and click Next to scan the data from formatted partition.

Scan data from quickly formatted partition

Step 4: The lost data will be found in several minutes, select the files you expect and click Recover to save them.

Recover lost data after quick format

Or right click selected photos or documents and select "Preview" to check recovery results before recovery, if the selected photos or documents can be previewed, they will be recovered by iBoysoft Data Recovery.

Important thing: Please don't save the recovered files to the partition where you are recovering data from it, otherwise, the lost data will be overwritten.

Quick format VS full format

As its name shows, quick format enables users to format a partition or storage device quickly. Quick format only erases the entries of the data and Windows will make the data invisible and prepare the space as available for the new data. Since the data still remains intact on the data area, you just need to use a professional format recovery software to recover lost data from quick formatted hard drive, external hard drive, USB flash drive, memory card, SD card, pen drive and so on.

Full format is also known as complete format, it often takes more time to perform a full format because full format would scan every sector on the storage device and check if it contains bad sectors.

Can data be recovered after full format?

Many users are not sure if data is recoverable after full format. As a matter of fact, data can be recovered after full format in Windows XP, but in Windows Vista/7/8/10, if you Full Format a partition, Windows would erase the data completely after full format so that the lost data cannot be recovered. Fortunately, the default format option is Quick Format.