Sadly i have tried Photo Rescue - it does look good and would i think be the only program that will allow me to rebuild the images. However it does not see the physical drive it only sees the logical drives but cant see how big they are and what format they are [as the format is corrupt on the drives] and i dont know what info to input to let it look at the drive and find the files if i take the custom option - the only programs that showed anything [corrupt JPEG's] after 4 days of looking at the 160GB HDD were -
http://the-undelete.com/digital_photo_recovery.exe
http://the-undelete.com/ntfs_data_recovery.exe
They look really good BUT only recover 'the [corrupt] files' they will not NOT rebuild/repair broken JPEG's like Photo Rescue seems able to do and which is what i need.
I have a few free programs that recover deleted images and they work fine with Mem Cards and formatted HDD's but my HDD 's format is corrupt as well.
Lexar - Softwareimage_rescue3
CONVAR & PCinspector Data Recovery Datenrettung recupero dati datarecovery rcupration donnesfile_recovery/UK/welcome.htm
As a last option i will reformat the HDD and see what happens next.
thanks for your suggestions
And being Scottish i really dont want to send the HDD off to someone who is going to charge me silly money to recover 14,000 files one by one and rebuild them. When we go to the boat we generally take four bags and we know that we need to have a good mix of clothes in each bag - had the Terminal Five/ BA lost bags fun so many times now and we have flown
Lost
In
Another
Terminal as well - it would seem i need to have multiple file copies in a few locations if i want to be sure my photos dont get lost.