Well that all depends, if you did a quick format all the data will still be there, its just marked as free space so it can be over written. A full format will gets rid of some data, but still the old stuff can be retrieved. You will only be able to recover any data that has not be over written by anything saved since the format. Its kind of like when you delete a file, the data is still on the hard drive, its just marked as free space. It wont truly be gone until it get over written by new data. Thats one reason why if you get rid of an old computer, you want to wipe the drive vs just formatting it. For those that don't know what happens when you wipe a drive, what the software is doing is filling up the hard drive with 0s.