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I have formatted my hard drive, now I wonder if it is possible to recover the files while I have reinstalled windows on the same drive and been using it for a few weeks and almost filled the hard drive with files?

I also have this question, is deleting all files and quickly formatting the hard drive essentially do the same thing? Like, deleting the files and quickly formatting the hard drive do not fully delete the file but it only allows the operating system to use the space occupied by the deleted files.

Thanks

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    Is it possible to recover files from quickly formatted HDD? yes while I have reinstalled windows on the same drive and been using it for a few weeks and almost filled the hard drive with files? that certainly makes it less likely
    – Gantendo
    Commented Mar 13 at 7:47
  • @Gantendo, thank you for your quick response. So when the space of a deleted file is filled up with data of other files then it is impossible to recover the deleted file?
    – mnish
    Commented Mar 13 at 7:51
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    @mnish Yes. Once the space is overwritten, you cannot see what was there before.
    – DavidPostill ♦
    Commented Mar 13 at 7:53

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is deleting all files and quickly formatting the hard drive essentially do the same thing?

Similar actions, but not the same results.

For an SSD that supports TRIM, it's highly likely that both operations TRIMed the data itself, so it no longer exists and cannot be recovered by any means.

For an HDD, both deleting a file and a quick format of the disk will leave the file's data on the disk, so that specialized recovery programs can still find it, on condition that it wasn't overwritten.

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