HELP! need to find stuff on drive after re- partitioning it

[omaha]

Okay, here is my problem. (running XP home)

I have just bought a new hard drive, partitioned it, and had some stuff copied to it.

I then deleted the partitions, and set some new ones up (was changing the size of the partitions). I havent put anything on the disk yet.

Then, i realise i want some of the stuff (new emails i just received using mozilla) that is on my new disk, prior to me changing the partitions.

Is there any way of checking what is on the new disk? I assume windows hasnt actually written over the stuff that i just put on there

All help much appreciated!

 

[bhalton26]

If you have partitioned it, then copied new files to the drive and then deleted the partitioned then your files have been deleted as well. In your text you stated than you copied files and then you said you deleted the partitions, but haven't added anything on the disk yet. Kind of confused on that part, but from my understanding once you have deleted a parition everything is deleted as well.

 

[omaha]

Yep, i had deleted the partition, but it only takes a few seconds.

So, my theory is that there is no way that windows has deleted the info on the disk- there was 180Gig on there.

So, does anyone know how i might be able to look at what might still be there?

 

[antas]

Delete partition indeed will take only a few seconds .. with any kind of partitions tools (windows disk management, partition magic, etc).

However there are some recovery tools available on the nets, some freewares too. I used Easy Recovery once, like couple of years ago (on Win98/2K era). I'd never done this again, always backup everything before messing with HDD