# how to find last format date of any drive



## perus

two days ago my friend D:/ drive was formatted by someone. and he says that i was the last person using after that format he has seen.i havent done that.
i want to is there a way to find the last format date and time of drive . event viewer or any log or any software that might help.my friendship is at risk.


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## perus

this is the first thing that i got on internet .i want to find format date 'D:/' drive.procedure for others drive


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## davehc

You may be lucky?
First, in folder options, make sure you can see both hidden and system folders.


Look in the Formatted drive for a file called "system volume information" If you have one, right click it, and it will show when the drive/folder was created.


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## TerryNet

Nice, Dave.  But to be precise that won't necessarily show when the "drive" was created, but it will show the last time the partition was formatted, right?


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## davehc

That's my thinking. Wouldn't that, in this case, be the same thing? May not be sufficient on the friendship problem though, but that's not my field!


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## perus

Well i was able to find the system volume information folder.but access denied after lot of googling i was able to open the folder but content folder says access denied .how i gain access and where from i get the info.


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## TerryNet

Right click on the folder - Properties - General tab - Created (date & time).


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## davehc

Just realised. I have full permissions on everything, for various reasons. You wont open the System Volume information folder/files by right clicking. You will need to tale full control by altering the security access. If you browse, you will find ways to do this. It is reasonably straightforward, but extremely dangerous. Accessing and altering the contents, can end up with a non bootable OS. I'll leave that decision with the OP.


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## perus

Just right clicked and check the created date it shows date of february 2013.so this is not helpful .any other hope .i was able to open the system volume information file and found 1 folder 2 dat file and 1 txt file.but was access denied .can these help me in finding


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## valis

is that the same PC as here?


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## davehc

Hmm. Well spotted. The last post on that link is interesting.


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## perus

Only interesting things happen to me.that pc was other or to be say mine(the motherboard died (R.I.P) and had buy new one )this is my friends laptop of lenovo running a genuine windows 8 upgraded from windows 7.


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## perus

Is there no hope for knowing.


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## DaveA

Look at the properties of your User Account folders. Then look at the creation date and time. You may want to do the same for any other folder that you might have made at the time of formatting. The user account date can be later, if it was not made at the time of formatting.

Remember that any folder to you copied from a backup, will have the date that is on the back up, which is normally before the format.


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## valis

as you've not answered my question yet, before we can continue to work on this pc, we need to verify it's authenticity:

Please run the MGA Diagnostic Tool and post back the report it creates:
Download *MGADiag* to your desktop.
Double-click on MGADiag.exe to launch the program
Click "Continue"
Ensure that the "Windows" tab is selected (it should be by default).
Click the "Copy" button to copy the MGA Diagnostic Report to the Windows clipboard.
Paste the MGA Diagnostic Report back here in your next reply.

Unfortunately, no further work can be done here until this is met.

thanks,

v


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## Cookiegal

He did reply Tim in post no. 13 that this is his friend's laptop. In his initial post he said his friend is accusing him of formatting his D drive so that's why he wants this information. Also, this laptop is running Windows 8 so they can't run the MGA Diagnostic tool.


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## Cookiegal

Please open an Elevated Command Prompt window (on the Start screen, type "Command" - a Command Prompt icon will appear, right-click on it and select Run as Administrator) then at the prompt, type the following (be sure to include the spaces):

Licensingdiag.exe -report %userprofile%\desktop\report.txt -log %userprofile%\desktop\repfiles.cab

After running the command, two files will appear on your desktop, report.txt and repfiles.cab. Please open the report.txt file in Notepad and copy and paste the contents here. The repfiles.cab is only a backup file and can be ignored for the time being.


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## valis

Cookiegal said:


> He did reply Tim in post no. 13 that this is his friend's laptop. In his initial post he said he friend is accusing him of formatting his D drive so that's why he wants this information. Also, this laptop is running Windows 8 so they can't run the MGA Diagnostic tool.


Whoops, my error, Cookiegal; thanks for the extra set of eyes on that one. 

My apologies, perus.


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## Cookiegal

No problem Tim.


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