| frank, no data is ever totally lost unless you detroy the disk platters themselves. the pathways to the data is lost or damaged, sometimes data is jumbled up and not accessible, but it's still there. their are numerous causes for the lost data.
I do data recovery for a living, if you need to get files back, good chance they can be recovered from the disk, and restored to their original format.
If you need help let me know.
cheers robin |