Does reformatting completely destroy emails?

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So, you’ve reformatted the hard disk or partition containing your emails?

I can’t say I’ve done that yet but I do know that your emails are likely just fine.

Reformatting media such as hard disks, Memory sticks, flash drives, and floppy disks doesn’t actually destroy the data. All reformatting does is clean up the tables and indexes containing the addresses and references to the data. The data remains on the disk - until new data comes along and replaces it.

When you reformat a media device, it “looks” like the device is empty. After all, all of your software and data is gone. However, if you had a tool that can look at the actual contents of the media device, you would see that the data remains. I’ve tested this myself by reformatting a Memory Stick and then looking at the Memory Stick in three different ways. First, I looked at it in my digital camera where it was as empty as could be. No pictures. No video files. Nothing. Next, I inserted it into my computer where it showed up as the H: drive. Once again, no pictures or video files. Just a blank Memory Stick awaiting new data. Finally, I scanned it with a data recovery tool (ParetoLogic’s Data Recovery Pro) and what did I see? All of my recently deleted photos along with photos I took months ago.

While my example illustrates data recovery on a reformatted Memory Stick, the same principles are at work when it comes to reformatted hard disks and email messages. By using a data recovery utility, you can recover data from your reformatted hard disk. I recommend the Data Recovery Pro tool in this case because it is able to recover virtually any file type including Outlook PST/OST files and Outlook Express DBX files. It is also able to restore entire partitions.

I also recommend that you do so right away before installing new software or adding new data to your system because once data is overwritten by new data, then it’s gone for good.

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