trying to recover lost files

[ITG Tech]

I just had a client that asked for help.
Apparently he had a broken DVD drive and had a PT replace it for him. Somehow during the process the entire hard drive was nuked and Windows Vista was reinstalled. Client had a lot of photos on the drive based on his work. All data appears lost. He has asked me to attempt a recovery of his lost information. Client brings in PC in an obviously worked on appearance. Covers removed, cables disconnected and otherwise not secured. I notice a SATA cable hanging free and found a second hard drive. Second drive was reconnected and appears to have same image as first. I don’t know if this was setup as a RAID or what.
I find no evidence of the previous original installation or files from it.

HP Pavilian a6228x AMD Athlon 64x2 2 GB RAM
Windows Vista Home Premium

Both drive contents appear to be near identical.
Windows Vista was re-installed with HP recovery disks.

Now for the dumb part.
Is it possible to recover any lost data, files, photos from the drive prior to the re-installation of the OS?
I must admit that I don’t have a lot of experience in this area. I know that there are specialized sources that can recover the data at a price.
Is it possible for the regular computer tech to recover this data?
Thanks in advance

 

[NickCat11]

It's going to be difficult to get the data back. Do you have any data recovery software? If not, give this a shot > http://www.runtime.org/data-recovery-software.htm

 

[ITG Tech]

I have all the Technibble Tools of the Week and the UBCD Win that I am using now. will give the link you provided a shot. Thanks for the response.

 

[ITG Tech]

Follow-up. Case solved. I used recova from the UBCD4WIN and it worked like a charm.

 

[NickCat11]

That's great news. I bet your client is thrilled. Good job!

 

[LunchBox]

I am glad to hear recuva found the files. I was going to suggestion get data back.

I've used it to recover files from a OS re-installation that happened a couple of weeks prior even after the user still used the PC. I am not sure how much I was able to recovery but the user was immediatelly happy when the files on the top of the list were the ones she wanted.

 

[NickCat11]

Jeez, GJ man, thats terrible of the pizza tech.
Why do people think they can fix computers just because they built their grandmother a computer?

You mean it doesn't? I have this on my list of qualifications

 

[iisjman07]

Apparently he had a broken DVD drive and had a PT replace it for him. Somehow during the process the entire hard drive was nuked

Am I the only one who thinks this is a new low, even for a pizza tech.

 

[NickCat11]

Yeah I'd say that's pretty bad. My 5 month old could have done a better job.