A business owner ran a factory reset on a Sony VAIO by accident, with financial records, client files and operational documents on it and no backup anywhere. Whether that is recoverable turns almost entirely on one choice made during the reset — and most people make the recoverable one.
The laptop held everything the business ran on. A reset was started by mistake and allowed to complete, and afterwards the machine was a clean Windows installation with none of it.
The client took it to a local computer shop first, who looked at it, told them honestly it was beyond what they could do without specialist equipment, and referred it on. That is the second referral of that kind in these case files, and it is the right call every time.
A Windows reset is not one operation. It presents a choice, and which option was taken determines whether this is a straightforward job or an impossible one.
“Keep my files” — Windows is reinstalled and personal files are preserved. Rarely a recovery job at all.
“Remove everything” then “Just remove my files” — the quick option and the default most people accept. It builds fresh file-system structures and installs a new Windows over the top, but it makes no attempt to erase the bulk of the disk. Your files are still physically present; nothing describes them any more. Very recoverable.
“Remove everything” then “Fully clean the drive” — the option that warns it may take several hours. It writes across the entire disk deliberately, and it does exactly what it says. Very little comes back from this, and no laboratory changes that.
The giveaway is time. A reset that finished in twenty minutes was the quick one. One that ran for hours was not. This client’s had completed quickly, which is why there was something to work with.
Just as important and considerably less well known.
On a mechanical drive, a quick reset leaves the old data sitting exactly where it was until something writes over it. The recovery window is measured in however long the machine stays unused.
On an SSD it is different in kind rather than degree. When the file system marks that space free it issues TRIM commands, telling the drive those blocks are no longer needed — and the controller then erases them physically during background garbage collection. That erasure is genuine and it happens on the drive’s own schedule, whenever it has power, whether or not anyone is using the machine.
A machine switched off immediately may retain whatever the controller had not yet reached. One left running for days generally will not. Same reset, same option chosen, entirely different prospects.
This is what separated a 95% recovery from a heap of unnamed files, and it is worth understanding because it is the difference between useful and useless.
NTFS describes every file in a master file table — one record per file, holding its name, its parent folder, its timestamps and either the file’s content directly (for very small files) or a list of where on disk its content lives.
A quick reset creates a new table. It does not scrub the old one, because there is no reason to spend time doing so. So most of the previous table was still sitting on the disk, complete, describing files that were also still sitting on the disk.
Recovering from surviving table records means files come back with their original names, in their original folders, with their original dates. Recovering by signature carving — scanning for file headers when no records survive — gives you the content and nothing else: thousands of files called 0001.docx onwards in a single directory. For a business looking for one specific invoice, that distinction is the whole job.
The drive was imaged read-only before anything else, and every attempt ran against the copy.
The fresh Windows installation occupied the start of the disk, so anything that had lived in that region was genuinely gone — overwritten by system files rather than merely unreferenced. Beyond it, the previous file system’s structures were substantially intact, and the old table was parsed to rebuild the directory tree as it had stood.
Where records had been destroyed, files were carved by signature and matched back to names wherever a surviving record could be paired with recovered content by size and location.
Documents were opened and spreadsheets checked rather than counted, since the client needed specific financial records rather than a large number of files.
About 95%, with most of the folder structure intact. The shortfall was material that had been sitting where Windows reinstalled itself.
The single thing that made it work was that the machine was not used afterwards.
So if you have just done this by mistake: stop now. Do not complete the Windows setup, do not sign in, do not install anything, and above all do not download recovery software onto the machine — that writes into precisely the free space holding your old files. Shut it down and leave it off, particularly if it has an SSD, where the drive quietly erases freed blocks in the background for as long as it has power. Single drives are from £300 +VAT after a free 48-hour diagnostic.
Post it or bring it in. Either way the diagnostic costs nothing and commits you to nothing, and you get one figure in writing before a single screw is turned.
Nothing can begin until the device is on the bench, which makes this the only step that needs anything from you. Pack it properly, put your details in with it, and send it over. What follows is a free diagnostic and a written figure, in that order.
Posting it? Use something tracked and insured — whatever is on the drive is worth considerably more than the postage. Bringing it in? Weekdays, 9am to 5:30pm, and it still wants packing as above for the journey.
Tell us what the device is, what it is doing, and anything already tried — an engineer will come back with a realistic view of the odds and a price band, before you commit to posting anything.
We’ll get back to you soon. Anything pressing, call 0161 871 0788.
Usually, if the quick option was used — “just remove my files” rewrites the file system structures without overwriting the bulk of the disk, so your data is still physically there. If “fully clean the drive” was chosen, very little comes back.
By how long it took. The quick option completes in roughly twenty minutes. The full clean warns that it may take several hours and does exactly that, writing across the whole disk. Time is the reliable indicator.
Considerably. On a mechanical drive the old data sits in place until overwritten. On an SSD the reset often issues TRIM, and the controller then erases those blocks physically in the background — so switching the machine off immediately matters far more.
Shut it down and leave it off. Do not complete the Windows setup, sign in, install anything or download recovery software onto it — each of those writes into the free space holding your files.
Often, yes. Where enough of the previous master file table survives, files return with their original names and folders. Where it does not, they are carved by signature and come back correct but unnamed.
From £300 plus VAT for a single drive, fixed in writing after a free 48-hour diagnostic, with most jobs no fix, no fee. The diagnostic will tell you which reset was used before you commit.
Kick off with an instant online quote, or ring us and talk it through first. Either way you’ll know a clear, fixed price before any work starts.