My point then is that whilst to the layman (i.e. me!) it seems as though all is lost the information must STILL be in there, somewhere?
Do any of you computer whizzkids know how I can retrieve the missing data myself rather than me having to part with large wads of cash and having to send it away again for "repair".
It's unlikely that you'll be able to do it yourself... although it's possible (as you have discovered), it's non-trivial, to put it mildly
See, for example, Peter Gutmann
http://www.cs.auckland.ac.nz/~pgut001/pubs/secure_del.html[/URL] or Ross Anderson
http://www.ftp.cl.cam.ac.uk/ftp/users/rja14/SISW02.pdf. Hence it's expensive. I'm sure that you don't want to hear me say this, but backups are much cheaper
