Is there any way to recover personal data after factory reset?

[Ajay_R]

Hi,

My I suspect my laptop was infected with malware. So I did factory reset. But in the process I lost all my data on d:drive. I thought it will  only format c:drive. Is there anyway I can recover data from d:drive. I can see there is one more small partition called e:drive with label recovery. It has some recovery data. But I do not know can I recover my data on d:drive. Any help will be highly appreciated.

Thank you,

AR

[WAWood]

@Ajay_R 

A factory reset involves reformatting the entire drive -- but contrary to what most folks think, this does not actually wipe the contents of the drive; instead, it recreates the partition records so the files and folders are no longer seen by Windows.

You might be able to use data recovery apps to get some of the files and folders back:

1) Download and install this utility on a working PC http://www.majorgeeks.com/news/story/recover_data_in_3_steps_with_minitool_power_data_recovery_free_...
2) Run the data recovery utility to see what can be retrieved from the old drive.

If that tool does not find what you need, an alternative is Recuva http://www.piriform.com/recuva

And, if that does not work well, the best tool out there is this one, but only the trial version is free http://www.file-recovery.com/