>I did reformat/reinitialize the disk. But I doubt the data is
>erased by this. The procedure takes a few seconds -- it should
>take longer than that to erase some 50+ Gb of data.
If it only took a few seconds I would hazard the entire disk surface
wasn't completely initialized or reformatted ("zeroing" all the data).
From when I used Norton Utilities the "Unerase" utility that scanned the
entire surface looking for anything to restore was the right tool for the
job. The "FileSaver" utility was helpful in this process, keeping a
separate record of where things were and what they were supposed to be,
but you had to have enabled it and been using it before the disaster.
"Unerase" (even on its own) I found worked excellently well to find
things I deleted, often recovering text fragments months long gone. With
the advent of OS X and Symantec's terribly inflated upgrade policies, I
don't use it anymore.
Chris
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