Getting away with a format in C: (Windows !!!)

[Trev]

$40 is a cheap price for a professional data recovery service. I'd be a little skeptical. But if they know what they're doing. . . .

And if you don't know what you're doing, you're likely to damage what you're trying to recover. . . .

Trev

[Trev]

@Jose

Yeah, NTFS fragments files just like most other file systems--it's just supposed to be more efficient when indexing those fragments. (So, if the file system knows where to find the data ahead of time, it can avoid high-level seeks and allow the disk subsystem to perform an optimal read. I'm probably over-simplifying.) Assuming the drive has just been repartitioned and not formatted, it should be possible for a data recovery specialist or a good software packge to recover the MFT and the file(s) you need.

Head over to http://www.sysinternals.com/publ.shtml and check out "Inside Windows 2000 NTFS, Part 1" and "Inside Windows 2000 NTFS, Part 2" by Mark Russinovich. (NTFS has remained mostly unchanged between 2000, XP, and 2003.)

Trev