How to Unformat Data?
As we known, disk format is the process of preparing a hard disk or other storage medium for use, including setting up an empty file system. When you format a disk, the operating system erases all bookkeeping information on the disk, tests the disk to make sure all sectors are reliable, marks bad sectors (that is, those that are scratched), and creates internal address tables for later uses to locate information. Every Hard Disk should be formatted before use. Formatting a disk involves two quite different processes known as low-level and high-level formatting.
High-level formatting: a process of writing the file system structures on the disk that let the disk to be used for storing programs and data.
Low-level formatting: a process of formatting disk surfaces and installing characteristics like sector numbers that are visible to, and used by, the disk controller hardware.
It is not necessary to format your disk through low-level format because it will physically damage the disk and cut short the life of the disk. A high-level format will suffice for most purposes by wiping out the control structures and writing new ones. The old information is lost and the disk appears as new after a high-level formatting.
Unformat means recover everything from the newly formatted disk. However, high-level format can be unformatted while low-level format can not.
Can you imagine the situation when you accidentally format disk and then realized the important data get lost? Usually, people format seemingly unnecessary disks only to find out that they really need them later.
When you encounter such case, you have to recover the lost information.
Why we could unformat:
When you format a disk, the operating system resets the FAT or MFT on the disk so that the MFT is now blank. The reason that you can no longer see and files with Windows is that the MFT is telling the Operating System that the drive letter does not contain any files. So the files are still where they were. That's why we could unformat a disk. The "unformat" means transfer the files on the formatted hard disk or partition to a separate one.
Restores a disk erased by the FORMAT command or restructured by the RECOVER command in DOS.
UNFORMAT drive: [/J]
UNFORMAT drive: [/U] [/L] [/TEST] [/P]
UNFORMAT /PARTN [/L]
drive:
Specifies the drive to unformat.
/J
Verifies that the mirror files agree with the systeminformation on the disk.
/U
Unformats without using MIRROR files.
/L
Lists all file and directory names found, or, when used withthe /PARTN switch, displays current partition tables.
/TEST
Displays information but does not write changes to disk.
/P
Sends output messages to printer connected to LPT1.
/PARTN
Restores disk partition tables.
Examples
unformat c:
Command specified to unformat drive c: if it was formatted.
Additional information
This program was designed to only be run in MS-DOS versions 5.0 to 6.22. If you have upgraded to Windows 9x, Windows NT, Windows 2000, Windows 2003, Windows XP, Windows Vista or any other operating system, this command will not restore any information but may possibly cause additional issues with the Hard Drive.
If you have lost computer files that you would like to try recovering, Data Recovery Wizard may help you. It is a simple tool to unformat FAT and NTFS hard disks.
Data Recovery Wizard is a fully automatic tool that restores data from damaged or high-level formatted drives. It scans the disk first and then restores the original structure of files and folders. In addition, Data Recovery Wizard can easily recover lost files due to deletion, lost partition or damaged logical drives, virus infection, software crash, unexpected shutdown and other unknown reasons.
To recover files from formatted drives, please follow this procedure:
1. Click the "Complete Recovery" button on the main window of Data Recovery Wizard.
2. The first screen on the "Complete Recovery" tool will display a list of volumes found on the drives found in your system. If the volume does not have a drive letter, then the volume will be listed at the hindmost and the drive letter will be instead by "*".
3. You should choose the volume that was formatted and click "NEXT" to start searching on this volume.
4. The Intelligent Searching module will scan on the selected volume, collect and analyze every byte on the volume, then show you a list of volumes which are possible on it.
5. After this scanning is finished, Data Recovery Wizard will permit you choosing 6 volumes at best to recover the data. And then, press "NEXT" button. The Data Recovery Wizard will launch the "Building directory" procedure to searching the files. You will see file/folder tree very soon.
6. Select the file or directory that you want to recover and press the "Next" button.
7. Select a directory and press the "NEXT" button to save the data.
EASEUS Data Recovery Wizard is easy to use, read-only data recovery software to quickly and safely unformat data that was formatted?Besides unformat function, that data recovery software may recover data due to deletion, lost partition or damaged logical drives, virus infection, software crash, unexpected shutdown and other unknown reasons
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