Recovering files from and to the same drive?

I mistakely formatted my sister's 1.5 TB hard disk. Recuva's quick scan showed nothing, but the ongoing deep scan is showing around 25000 files (73%).

The problem is that my laptop is the only computer in my house, and it hardly has any storage left. I have acces to no other storage media.

So, is it okay if I restore the recovered files in the same 1.5 TB hard disk, or is there a risk of data being overwritten?

I would advise against it, as with that amount of data you will almost certainly overwrite what you are trying to recover. You need a separate drive with al least as much free space as the source drive.

Have you tried a scan with Scan for Non-Deleted Files checked? If you did a quick format this may be of more help than a deep scn, which does not return file names or directory structure, and only recoveres the first extent of any file.

Update:

Deep scan completed and returned 169 files worth 267GB. But as I recall, about 600 -700GB of that drive was used. I wonder what those 25,882 ignored files are tho.

By the way, quick scan with scan for non-deleted files showed 2 useless files only, so I'm gonna do a deep scan for non-deleted files.

And as I'm yet to buy a drive to recover those 169 files too, can I hibernate/sleep my pc till then?

Those ignored files are files that have not been deleted, live files from the install and whatever else has taken place.

A deep scan with scan for non-deleted files doesn't make sense. Addresses for non-deleted files are held in the MFT, and a deep scan doesn't look at the MFT.

If you have run a format which zeroes the free space then all this is of no avail.

The accidental format was a quick format.

One last question which you didn't answer: As I'm yet to buy a drive to recover those 169 files too, can I hibernate/sleep my pc till then?

Thanks for the help <span>:)</span>

I guess so. Your sister's HDD is not your laptop, is it? Just keep that HDD out of use.

Ok! Thanks bud.

If you hibernate/sleep your system it won't save the Recuva scan results and you'll have to start over from scratch.

Update :

Files are shown in excellent condition. I recovered a few of them which were pdfs, powerpoints & photos. But they wont open for some reason.

Preview of the same photos existed in recuva. What the hell is going on?!?




(I didn't hibernate btw)

All files found with a deep scan will be in Excellent condition, as a deep scan looks at unallocated clusters, which by definition can't be in use by any other file.

A deep scan will only find the first extent of any file, as there is no method at the cluster level of linking extents together. This may result in the file being upopenable.

If that's the case, why is the preview file showing the photo perfectly?

Perhaps because the preview is embedded at the start of the file. Don't expect me to know the answer to everything.

My sister will probably kill me now. Wish me good luck.