There are a million places that can recover the data on your hard drive. Do a Google search for 'hard drive recovery' and you'll see what I mean.
Most of the data you're looking for is probably still on the drive. The problem is that you've slicked the disk and reloaded the operating system. The more stuff you put back on, the greater the possibility that old data will be overwritten by the new stuff. I don't know how much you know about the following, so bear with me if you already know this.
Drives are divided into tracks and sectors. Tracks are concentric rings and sectors are sections of each ring. When you load from scratch, the installation starts at track 0, sector 0 (not really, but for purposes of this discussion it works) and loads sequentially until the OS is on the disk. Loading applications work the same way. When your done with a basic install, everything is pretty much packed tight on the beginning of the disk.
As you use the computer, create files, delete files, etc. data is written to, and erased from, the hard drive. What happens over time is that data gets scatterered all over the disk. You don't physically know where that data is stored on the disk (nor do you need to). The filesystem keeps track of it for you.
When you reloaded the OS, you overwrote all of that record-keeping info. It also loaded all of the OS and application files at the beginning of the drive again. Any user information that may have been written to the beginning of the drive is most likely gone for ever. Any data that was at the middle or end of the disk is probably still there, but there isn't any filesystem info to tell the OS where it is.
To maximize the chance or recovering old info, stop loading stuff on to your computer.
All that being said, there are outfits out there that can recover anything you didn't overwrite. You mail the disk off to them and they mail it back to you (mostly) fixed. I have a friend who did exactly what you did. All he really wanted were his Outlook files. Fortunately for him, those files had not been overwritten. If you'd like, I'll ask him where he sent it, how much it cost, and get back to you.
-Slimroot
My computer crashed and I had to reinstall everything, which deleted everything I had.
If you have seen me, please contact me and let me know.
If you have not seen me, but want to be on my mailing list, please let me know this as well.
If you have any idea in the world how to recover things on a computer when you have to reinstall the operating system and applications, please let me know. I'm fairly knowledgeable of computers and applications so this will be something complicated. I have done a search for files that I know were on there and I cannot find them. What was on my D: drive is still present. It is only what was on my C: drive that was overwritten.
Your help is greatly appreciated and I thank you in advance for your consideration.
Love, Me
Related link: http://www.almostnolimits.com
There are a million places that can recover the data on your hard drive. Do a Google search for 'hard drive recovery' and you'll see what I mean.
Most of the data you're looking for is probably still on the drive. The problem is that you've slicked the disk and reloaded the operating system. The more stuff you put back on, the greater the possibility that old data will be overwritten by the new stuff. I don't know how much you know about the following, so bear with me if you already know this.
Drives are divided into tracks and sectors. Tracks are concentric rings and sectors are sections of each ring. When you load from scratch, the installation starts at track 0, sector 0 (not really, but for purposes of this discussion it works) and loads sequentially until the OS is on the disk. Loading applications work the same way. When your done with a basic install, everything is pretty much packed tight on the beginning of the disk.
As you use the computer, create files, delete files, etc. data is written to, and erased from, the hard drive. What happens over time is that data gets scatterered all over the disk. You don't physically know where that data is stored on the disk (nor do you need to). The filesystem keeps track of it for you.
When you reloaded the OS, you overwrote all of that record-keeping info. It also loaded all of the OS and application files at the beginning of the drive again. Any user information that may have been written to the beginning of the drive is most likely gone for ever. Any data that was at the middle or end of the disk is probably still there, but there isn't any filesystem info to tell the OS where it is.
To maximize the chance or recovering old info, stop loading stuff on to your computer.
All that being said, there are outfits out there that can recover anything you didn't overwrite. You mail the disk off to them and they mail it back to you (mostly) fixed. I have a friend who did exactly what you did. All he really wanted were his Outlook files. Fortunately for him, those files had not been overwritten. If you'd like, I'll ask him where he sent it, how much it cost, and get back to you.
-Slimroot
Good post Slimroot, with a pretty good description of how the drive system works.
However, every moment the computer is active, the chances of recoving files decreases. Just because you aren't actively using the computer doesn't mean the drive is idle, especially in the later versions of Windows. XP, by default, is continually finding ways to optimize itself, growing/shrinking the page file, and building indexing files all the time. If there is any hope to recover files, the drive in question needs to be shut down and removed NOW.
Also, question the cost. Are the files you are looking for worth the several hundred dollars (minimum) that it costs for a professional recovery company to restore?