Can overwritten data formatted be recovered?

Hello,

I am always bothered by one question. Can overwritten data be got back from the external hard drive? 1 year ago my bought external had something wrong and I formatted it. But I reaaaaaly had some important documents inside. At that time I thought I am done and ignored it. But now I know formatting won't make data erased permanently. many data recovery programs can got them back. But the data was formatted 1 year ago, it probably has been overwritten for many times.

So my question is can I recover the overwritten data in my formatted external HD? Thanks for your listenning. Any help will be highly appreciated....thanks again.