Recovering data on window 8/8.1

[The End of A Heartache]

Friend/ client of mine brother passed away after serving in the army. His things were moved from Hawaii and stored in a storage area in Colorado (I don't know why they did not ship it all to where his family lives)

Long story short, one of the workers took his laptops (all 3 of them) and over written his account with there own. His family not really knowing till after they came back they asked me if there is a way to recover all his data (mainly old photo's) from all 3 laptop.

I know there are a handful of window apps that helps recover lost information and more then a handful in linux to help recover data.

My question is, since i am dealing with window 8, even after all the data was overwritten and most likely trashed will I be able to find the trashed information and recover what was lost????

[RDC]

The more that was done with the laptops the harder it will be to recover any of the original data you're after. Win 8 or not, they work that way where if the data is deleted, that space becomes free game for any new data to be written there. Best you can really do is just get them and scan thru them. Install nothing on the HDD, run any recovery software from CD or USB and just see what's still there.

[The End of A Heartache]

From what I do know, the account was going into recovery mode on the two laptops (not sure about the third one), This is what they told me not what I do know. When they tried to recover the account they saw it didn't have there son's name or similarity.  I do know that window's does save some account setting and or few remaining data through the trash file can some time's be recovered through the i386 folder hidden.

Wondering now what software and OS  would work well to atleast and try to recover this lost data. I can pull and run the HDD externally on my laptop.

Info spec of what I do run

laptop partition 1: window 8.1 core x64
laptop partition 2: Linux KDE x64

Still learning my linux but It does impress