How much of the data can be recovered will depend on how many times the
data has been overwritten. If you have just formatted the partition, and
there is a image snapshot of the drive in the root sector, that was made
using  utilities such as Norton Image, or SystemSuite image, then the hard
drive can be immediately, quickly, and fully restored using those utilities.

If you have FDISKed and Formated then you will probably have to use a Data
Recovery program in order to recover the data, unless the image program can
see their root sector image files.  SystemSuite has such a program.
Depending on your licensing you can either get back a few files while in
windows, or you boot off a DOS floppy, which will search the drive for
data, then you select the data you want to restore, which often has the
first character overwritten, and then you recover to a different physical
hard drive, after which you restore the first character. If you are trying
to restore more then a few files, then this is a VERY long and tedious
process.

Finally there are companies that will physically remove the platter, and
then using special methods, and equipment, recover the data at the machine
code level. The manufacture of SystemSuite offers this service. There are
quite a few companies that do data recovery. It is a very expensive
procedure, but as long as the platters are intact, and somebody hasn't
professionally overwritten the drive in a way that destroys the data, then
the data can usually be recovered at some level.

Rode
The NOSPIN Group
http://freepctech.com

At
  12:31 AM 10/4/2003, you wrote:

>However, many of the responses to this thread seem to say a restoration is
>easily done. So, for those who have done it, I'd like to know the exact
>steps that will restore a Hard drive that has been fdisked and formated
>with MS-DOS.
>
>Please note that I'm not speaking of the restoration of deleted files but
>the restoration of all the files on the hard drive that has been FDISKED
>and FORMATED  with MS-DOS.
>
>mike michel
>-----------------------------------------------------------------
>On Fri 10/03/03, Mark Rode wrote:
>Subject: Re: [PCBUILD] Wiping hard drive clean
>
>This can be done, and can be done securely, but it can be a time consuming
>process, as government certified file destruction  involves many overwrites.
>Try Autoclave http://staff.washington.edu/jdlarios/autoclave/
>-----------------------------------------------------------------

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