Why does my hard drive only show a pqi file

[buddnkoke]

Hello,my mother board has died on my laptop, it was suggested I take the hardrive and put it in an external hardrive case and retrieve data. problem is all I can see is 1 PQI file of which I cannot view. When I look at the properties Instead of showing its a 40Gb hard drive it is showing as a 3Gb harddrive with only 1Gb free. Can anybody help??
thx Greg

 

[WyomingKnott]

PQI is usually a Powerquest backup image; do you use Powerquest?

This seems like a good case to try recovery software. EASEUS provides a free recovery package; Clonezilla attempts to copy the whole drive sector-by-sector regardless of bad directory information, and quite a few people here can recommend more advanced recovery software.

If the data on the drive is important to you, if you are not comfortable playing with such utilities, and if you are willing to spend a bit of money, the local computer shop could have a go at it for you.