Cheers will, will try that :thumbs:

ubuntu is a good idea but it depends what state the file system is in, I'd suggest using R-Studio to recover the files.

good idea, i have a few lying around, however i'm not sure if it'll be able to help...will give it a crack tonight :thumbs:

boot a ubuntu live disk, this has got me out of afew sticky situations!

See's the drive fine. Any recommendations to software ? Will start downloading stuff, just as im at work after something free and legal ?

As long as it sees the device there you can download some data recovery software and see what it can grab.

Right my personal PC is fked, last night chucked a spare hdd in and installed xp, put my original drive in as a second drive and it couldn't see any data...

Checked disk management and it reckons that there isnt a partition on it...and obviously i can create a partition, not format so it comes up as a drive, however as it isnt formatted i can't look at any of the data on it.

I don't really want to loose the stuff on the drive and just reformat it, as it has all my photo's, music etc etc etc, however i'm not sure if there is anything to do ? Looked on tinternet and can't see anything...so any idea's ??