Files deleted or drive has been formatted
We’ve recovered data from hundreds of deleted or formatted drives over the years. We treat Deleted Files and Formatted and Reinstalled OS Drives differently than most other types of cases, because with these, we don’t have control over whether the desired data is still actually on the drive or whether it has already been overwritten. The likelihood of success with these is dependent on many factors, usually best discussed over the phone as you explain your individual, unique scenario. For instance, when a file is deleted from a hard drive, the data isn’t usually overwritten until the space is reused for other files, but when a file is deleted from an SSD using TRIM (which is almost all modern SSDs), the TRIM program will often very quickly overwrite the deleted file with zeroes, to make those sectors immediately re-usable for new files.
With deleted-files and formatted-drive cases, assuming there is no hardware problem with the drive, we usually quote a flat rate for success based on the size of the drive, but we also must quote an attempt fee if unsuccessful. If you call in with a description of the unique situation and drive type, (I.E. SSD or hard drive, what types of files are needed, how long ago it happened, and how much new data has been transferred to the drive since the deletion or formatting), we can try to make educated guesses on likely chances for success once we know more details about your unique situation. The reason for the attempt fee with these is because we actually spend more time on the cases with which we’re not successful as we try multiple attempts and approaches to rule out all options, while with the successful cases, we often have success on the first try and spend much less time.