How to Get Photos Back After Formatting?

“Hello everyone, I am facing a serious trouble. I tried using a third party tool to repartition my system hard drive, but messed up with the process. After which, one of the partitions on the drive that hoarded all my media files like videos, pictures, songs, etc. showed Format error message. Whenever I tried to access the files from the partition, this error pops up saying to format the partition. So I formatted the partition and end up losing all its contents. Does anybody know to recover videos after format on Windows PC? Please help”

Format!!!! It is one of the known and well used words among all computer users. Format is a temporary way of erasing data as well as solving format errors from a storage device by recreating the file structure and emptying the registry entries. Though data is not permanently removed from the device by performing format process, it is made unreachable to the OS and cannot be retrieved in any of the manual ways. Thus, user faces tremendous loss of files after accidentally formatting any storage device.

Formatting becomes vital in few scenarios that further render loss of videos, such as:

  • Inaccessibility Issues: Storage devices like system hard drive, memory card, Memory Stick, USB drive, etc. on which users’ preserve videos can get inaccessible due to factors like file system corruption, virus intrusion, mishandling the device, etc. After which, formatting will be conducted in order to overcome the inaccessibility issues on storage media
  • User mistakes: While accessing video files from system drive or from external devices, chance of accidental formatting is frequently seen among vast users. Apart from this, abrupt removal of external storage media or sudden system termination can make the device corrupt making it to show format error, 0 data on the device and other errors that brings a need to format the device

When video files and other files are deleted due to unintentional formatting, the first thing to be taken care of is to stop using the storage device for any data storage purpose. Because, as said above formatting cannot remove files permanently; the process just clears the registry entries making all the files invisible to the OS. So, if storing of new data on the formatted storage device is avoided, then deleted videos and other data can be easily retrieved back.

Best approach to extract video files after format:

Video files deleted after formatting can be recovered by employing renowned software like Yodot Photo Recovery that securely brings back each and every file from formatted storage devices. The software is equipped with extreme recovery strategies that help to regain files like pictures, videos, music files, RAW images, Office files, etc. on Windows computers. The tool can recognize video file types like AVI, MOV, DIVX, MP4, MPEG, 3GP, XVID, M4V and many popular video formats from various storage media like system hard drive, removable drive, USB flash drive, memory cards, memory Stick, etc. The application can also restore media files from iPod, MP3 players, etc. with intense simplicity. One can employ this tool on computers/notebooks working with Windows XP, Windows Vista, Windows 8, Windows 7, Windows Server 2003 and Server 2008 operating systems.

Guidelines to retrieve video files after formatting:

Note: Connect the formatted storage media to Windows computer as external drive and follow the below steps.

  • Download Yodot Photo Recovery software on to a Windows PC
  • Set up the software and launch it to trigger video file recovery
  • Main screen displays two options i.e. “Deleted Photo Recovery” and “Lost Photo Recovery”
  • Click on Lost Photo Recovery option and proceed next
  • Further, software lists out all the drives present on the system (both logical and physical)
  • Choose the drive that was formatted and from which video files has to be recovered
  • After clicking next, wizard shows a list of file types to be recovered
  • Select required file types to restore or else skip the step (by default software recovers all file types)
  • Software now, performs a rigorous and rapid scan of selected drive to extract formatted video files
  • End results on the scanning process will show all the possible files restored from the formatted storage component in two view types
  • Pick your required files by going through Data View and File Type view options
  • Preview the rescued file details prior to saving and then save all your necessary videos to desired location on host system drive

Precautionary Steps:

  • Avoid mishandling storage gadgets and computer systems to get rid of Format error
  • Recurrently backup all your necessary videos and other necessary files on multiple storage devices
  • Do not perform format process mistakenly without having current backup

Other Popular Software

Yodot Photo Recovery (Windows)

Recover and restore deleted photos lost from your digital camera memory card or the images from your Windows PC. The software can recover all popular image types including popular audio and video files.

Yodot Mac File Recovery

The only undelete application for Mac that can recover deleted files from HFS+, HFSX partitions on Mac. The software also has the ability to recover lost files using RAW signature method.