How it was lost · a format ran
Most calls we take from Cardiff start the same way: Format was clicked on a disk nobody meant to touch. Almost always it was the quick sort — a fresh empty index over files that never moved, which as data loss goes is one of the kinder versions. A format left running to the finish is a different case, and you deserve to hear that on the phone rather than once the parcel is here.
Describe the symptoms to an engineer
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| Warning signs | What has gone wrong | Do this now |
|---|---|---|
| You clicked yes when Windows asked to format it | A fresh empty index sits over your old one | Stop there — the files are still underneath |
| It opens with nothing inside and all space reads as free | Only the catalogue was replaced; the contents it pointed at remain | Put nothing new onto it |
| A full format allowed to finish | Since Vista a full format writes zeros across every sector, and a zero holds nothing | The honest answer: gone |
| A full format stopped midway | Whatever the zero pass had not reached is intact | Cancel it, then cut the power |
| diskpart clean | It takes off the partition table only; the volumes beneath survive | A good chance here |
| diskpart clean all | Writes zeros over the entire disk, just as a completed full format would | The honest answer: gone |
| An SSD, quick-formatted | TRIM has gone off; the controller is emptying cells as you read this | Unplug it immediately |
The diagnosis costs you nothing. Every item that arrives is logged under a case number of its own, and an engineer works out what has actually failed — then tells you plainly which files can come back and which cannot. The price follows that: one fixed figure, in writing, and no work begins until you have read it and said go ahead.
Full or quick? clean or clean all? Run to the end, or halted halfway? Those answers set the ceiling on what can come back, so an engineer nails them down before a word is said about odds.
All of this happens on the image. What is left of the earlier file system gets prised out from under the new one and reassembled. Where enough records hold, the names, the dates and the tree they sat in come back with the files.
Where no structure survives at all, files are found by the byte pattern each format begins with and lifted whole off the image. Names go back on wherever something left behind still points to them.
Nothing is billed while you are still deciding. A complete listing of what came off the drive reaches you first, and the invoice only follows your yes. Files travel back on media bought new for the job, return postage ours, and we do not close it here until every one of them opens on the machine you will use.
Where you stand, plainly: a quick format on its own and the outlook is good. A full format allowed to run out, or clean all typed into diskpart, leaves nothing to look for — every sector has had a zero put into it on purpose, which is how Windows has behaved since Vista. Should a firm claim it can undo a finished full format, ask it to explain the mechanism.
Two matching 2TB disks sat side by side in one tower, and it was the family archive that got wiped, not the blank one. A quick format only rewrites the index; the files themselves stay where they lie, which is why this one came back. Nothing had been written since, so the archive listed out as before.
Almost everything, in most cases. On a hard disk the quick option builds a fresh, empty index and leaves the sectors alone, so your files have not moved an inch. Provided nothing new has landed on top of them, folders usually list out again under their own names.
Only if a full format ran to the end. Since Vista, Windows lays a zero in every sector it passes. The quick option does no such thing, and that difference decides most cases.
Leave it alone and shut the machine down, then let a bench take an image. Whatever gets written from now on settles onto files that would otherwise have come back.
Very. On an SSD the quick format normally sets TRIM going, and the drive begins scrubbing the freed blocks by itself within seconds. Cut the power and ring us now — of every format job this is the one counted in minutes.
A failing drive has only so many starts left in it. Spend none of them. Keep the power off, and the free diagnosis will tell you what is still readable.