The cause · Format clicked on the wrong volume
Everything here depends on which format ran. Nine cases in ten it was the quick kind: the index is exchanged, the files themselves do not move, and folder trees usually come home with dates and names still attached. Where a full format reached the end the conversation is a different one, better had by telephone than after postage has been paid. The call from Bromley, from Camden, from Croydon rarely varies — Format went to the wrong disk. Stop there and ring. The assessment is free. £250 + VAT is what a card or a stick comes to, £300 + VAT a drive, and on most jobs no charge is raised where the files do not return.
Put it to an engineer — the first look costs nothing
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| How it shows itself | The usual reason for it | Where that leaves you |
|---|---|---|
| A format prompt came up and was agreed to | There is a blank new index where the old one used to sit | The files below it are untouched — so leave it alone |
| It opens empty, and reports the whole disk as free | Only the listing changed; what it pointed at has not moved | Stop anything else being written |
| A full format allowed to run through | Every data sector gets a zero from a full format, and has done since Vista; a zero contains nothing | Nothing survives underneath it |
| A full format stopped part-way through | Anything the zeros never got to is whole | Stop it, then unplug |
| diskpart, and the word clean | Takes the partition table off and nothing else; the volumes beneath are untouched | Usually still recoverable |
| diskpart, and the words clean all | Every sector is zeroed, which lands you where a completed full format would | Zeros, and nothing besides |
| An SSD after a quick format | TRIM has gone out, and a controller nobody asked is already clearing cells | Power it off now |
A case number goes on it the day the parcel lands, and an engineer settles what has truly failed before anything else happens — free of charge, and first in the order of work. Back to you come two things together: a straight note of what is liftable and what is not, plus one figure, fixed and written down. Accept it, or decline and owe us nothing.
Clean all, or just clean? Full, or quick — and did it run to completion? Everything readable is capped by the answer, so it is settled on the bench before anybody puts a number on your chances.
All the work runs against the image, and the disk you posted is never written to. Whatever survives of the old file system gets separated from the one that replaced it and reassembled. Recover enough of those records and the filenames, the dates and the folder structure all return with the data.
With no structure left, files are recognised by the header their format opens with and taken off the image entire. Should a surviving record still carry a name, that name goes back on.
What was recovered is listed for you first, and only then does a bill exist. Approve the list and it is invoiced; turn it down and it is not — and where nothing has come back, most jobs carry no charge whatever. Recovered data travels home on fresh media bought in for your job, with the postage at our end. Your case is not closed until you have read those files on a machine of your own.
Plainly, then: where nothing but a quick format has happened the news is good and the job is usually short. Where a full format got to the end, or clean all was typed at diskpart, the position reverses: every sector now holds a zero, on purpose, which has been the behaviour of every Windows since Vista, and nothing is left beneath to search for. Any firm offering to undo one should be asked exactly how. You get our answer before you get a figure, and it costs nothing.
One tower held two 2TB disks of the same make, and the wrong one of the two was formatted: the family archive, not the spare. Since a quick format only puts down a new index, everything under it stayed exactly where it had been. Nothing more had been written to that disk, and the archive read back just as it had gone on.
Normally the whole lot. What a quick format actually writes on a hard disk is one item: a new and empty index. Below that, no sector is touched. Nothing of yours moved — only its catalogue was swapped over. So long as nothing has been written to the disk since, the folder structure generally reappears, dates and filenames included.
Only if a full format was allowed to finish. Ever since Vista, that pass has written a zero into every sector it goes over; a quick format writes none. Most jobs on this page turn on nothing more than which of the two it was.
Power the machine down. Put that disk aside, unused, and get it imaged by an engineer before anything else is allowed near it. From now on, every file you save might come down on top of something readable.
No. An SSD that has been quick-formatted usually issues TRIM within the second, and its controller then clears those blocks unprompted. Cut the power and ring us. Delay costs you more on this fault than on any other format job we take in.
Looking at it is free. Back comes a list of what opened and what did not, together with a single price to finish, set down in writing while you are still free to say no. On most jobs an invoice only follows the data. Until that list reaches you, leave the drive switched off.