How To Recover Data After Factory Resetting On Windows 8?

Updated on June 16, 2022

“Hi, my Windows 8 system had too many bad sectors on its hard drive and it was taking a lot of time to respond during each activity. So my cousin suggested a factory reset the PC by taking backup. I clearly remember that I saved backup data from my Windows 8 system in an external storage drive. After completing the restore process, I looked for backup files from a removable storage drive and found none. The drive was completely empty, as my brother formatted it to save some important data without knowing that I had saved the backup files in it. Can I get back erased data from the factory-restored Windows 8 system drive? Please help.”

Windows 8 OS, along with its launch, introduced a smart feature to easily reset computer settings to default factory settings with the option, ‘Remove everything and reinstall Windows’ or just ‘Refresh your PC without affecting your files. The first option in Settings will wipe off all data on Windows 8 PC / laptop and restores the settings to the point of its purchase by running the installation disk. So before continuing with the process of factory reset, users should backup essential data from Windows 8 hard drive. If you proceed with the second option, it doesn’t assure resolving all issues as the process doesn’t touch any of the user files.

Why Is It Necessary To Factory Reset Windows 8?

There are a few reasons that might compel users to factory restore Windows 8 computers by removing everything and reinstalling OS, such as:

• While selling it to buyers or giving away an old machine to a family member or a friend
• To clean reinstall Windows 8 OS for better performance
• To free up space on the hard drive
• To get rid of any complex errors with Windows 8 hard drive

As said before, one should possess a backup of vital data from the system drive before restoring settings to their defaults. If the backup is out of reach or if any interruption occurs while refreshing settings of the Windows 8 system, data gets completely unavailable from user access. In such an instance, rolling over to a good data recovery program is the right way to recover files after factory reset Windows 8.

How To Recover Files After Windows 8 Reset?

To get rid of data loss due to factory resetting Windows 8 with the absence of backup, try using Yodot Hard Drive Recovery software. This software is capable of retrieving file types like doc, ppt, pdf, zip, rar, dbs, xls, png, jpeg, mp3, mp4, mpeg, tiff, exe, dll, flv, img, pst, ost, and many more from a restored Windows 8 hard drive. It even helps to create a disk images of an entire hard drives with severe bad sectors in order to extract data from that image file by skipping bad sectors. Apart from files, this program can achieve successful recovery of deleted, lost, or corrupted partitions with NTFS, NTFS5, FAT32, Fat16, and ExFAT file systems by scanning the drive sector by sector. Apart from recovering data after Windows 8 reset, it also has the ability to bring back all files from Windows 10, Windows 8.1, Windows 7, Windows Vista, Windows XP, Windows Server 2008, and 2003 OS-based computers in various data disasters.

Very important Note!!!

Do not use your Windows 8 PC, laptop or Tablet after factory reset if you want to achieve complete recovery of deleted data.

Steps to Recover Data After Windows 8 Factory Reset:

• Connect the hard drive from Windows 8 system to another Windows computer.
• Download Yodot Hard Drive Recovery software on this host computer by logging in as a system administrator.
• After complete installation of the software, launch it and wait till the main screen appears.
• Next, click on the Partition Recovery option to rescue data wiped off Windows 8 hard drive after factory reset.
• Clicking Next, the program displays a list of drives that are associated with the host computer.
• Choose the drive that represents the restored Windows 8 hard disk drive.
• Further, add or select the file types to be recovered from the selected drive or just Skip this step to select all file types by default.
• The scanning process ends by showing regained files in different view types.
• Have a quick look at the recovered files using the Preview option.
• Finally, Save the required data from the recovery session after purchasing the product key in the host computer drive, not to the same Windows 8 hard drive from which files were recovered.

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