Greetings,
It sounds as though the hard drive lost the partition(s). That doesn't happen too often, but I have seen this before.
I don't think that there's a way to retrieve data from a drive that's lost the partition without paying big $$$ toa disk recovery firm. Even then, it may not be possible.
However, try this free download. They claim:
"FinalData is a software that allows you to retrieve information that you have lost from your hard drive, even after you have deleted your recycle bin. It works by retrieving the deleted data from your cache and allows you to save the data back into your harddrive! With an easy and straight forward interface, you won't find it difficult to work the program at all. It even helps you to recover the lost partition that your harddrive won't acknowledge after you have formatted your hard drive. However, you can solve that from your BIOS settings. But the fact remains that it allows you to retrieve your lost, valuable information. However,the downside is that Final data is shareware and you can only save 3 items at a time..."
(Their claim, not mine.)
http://the-rise.s5.com/downloads.html
(REMOVE SPACES from the pasted URL.)
Good luck,
Maxwell
