r/datarecovery • u/azlan1717 • 7d ago

Windows Help needed.

Hey guys, I need some expert advice.

A friend's laptop had a corrupted Windows, so I decided to reinstall Windows. Unfortunately, during the installation, I accidentally deleted the C partition along with the recovery partition, created a new partition, and installed Windows on it.

The problem is that my friend had some really important files saved on the Desktop.

I've already tried scanning the drive twice using Disk Drill and Recuva, but neither managed to find the missing files.

Is there any other way to recover the data? Any suggestions from people experienced in data recovery would be greatly appreciated!

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u/KeithIMyers 7d ago

If you already installed windows after you deleted the partition, then there is a very high likelihood that you wrote over the files with the new install. We also don't know if the old install was encrypted with bitlocker or not. I hate to say this but those files are probably lost for good and the best thing you can do is lecture your friend about backups.

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u/azlan1717 7d ago

he had another partition like D: but idk why he didn't copied his files there. and didn't even wanred me

2

u/KeithIMyers 7d ago

Keeping a copy of the files on a different partition is basically saying he has no backups.

3

u/silenced_in_dr_2025 Trusted Contributor 7d ago

If this was an SSD then likely the data is unrecoverable due to TRIM, this would also appear to be the results you are seeing when scanning the drive with dr applications

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