I finally got my old PC back from my ex-wife. The lovely lady formatted the C drive and erased everything. I need to know the name of a good Company that I can mail the drive to and have them recover the data. She trashed all my backup discs and there are a few files I really need to recover. If you know of a good company please post the name and phone number. I will be gone for the next week or so but will try to check in. Any help is appreciated.

I think the more important question is: "Is my lost data worth the hundreds, possibly thousands of dollars it will cost to recover it?"

If they were [b]that[/b] important, I'd suggest taking her to small claims and getting her to pay for the recovery.

the_reject

If you're thinking of recovery, the most important thing is to not do anything to the disk.  Don't try to install anything, even the operating system.  If all she did is format it, the recovery process is pretty simple.  You can use software such as OnTrack EasyRecovery DataRecovery ($200) to restore the formatted partition(s) on the hard drive.  If she used some kind of wiping software which repeatedly overwrites the disk, you definitely need professional help.  [I'm afraid I don't know of any shops personally who do it.]

In any case, if you have to lay down any money, I'll second the_reject; get the money from her.

P.S.  If you just need this software for this one use, I know somebody who could loan you the MS-DOS files (which fit on a floppy).  Email me for details.

Assuming you can't live without the data, I'd go with fizassist & try On Track & see what happens.  Data recovery guys I use start just short of $2K and go up from there; that $2K is without warranty...you pay whether or not they're successful.  For client drives I've sent it, success rate is about 50/50.

Makes it obvious that you should spend the money on a CD burner & use it often for backups.

-hanko