Wayne Stallwood wrote:
Try Photorec http://www.cgsecurity.org/wiki/PhotoRec it is probably in your favourite distro's package repository (on ubuntu and debian it is in the testdisk package)
It works very well even if the partition information etc is lost as it just looks for recognisable file headers.
This definitely looks useful for the future.
However, as far as I can tell this disk is not seeking at all. If I hold the disk in my hand I can feel a very faint clicking as if the drive is trying to seek but failing. I left it scanning for an hour or so with Photorec but all I was getting were streams of kernel errors.
Looks like a professional job is necessary or I give up :-(
These guys: http://www.datatrack-labs.co.uk/ .. look to be the cheapest but have the kit necessary to do the proper job if they're any good. Anyone heard of them?