Urgent!! Help needed to recover lost data

rsvr85 said:

A Preferred Method of Uploading/Posting Screen Shots :)

This is it hope you can read it!

no that is D Drive and G must be my printer so my external harddrive is not showing up at all

have i got right download as i am getting an error message "invalid"

TestDisk & PhotoRec 6.11.3 (6 May 2009), Data Recovery

Is it ok for windows 7 as its not mentioned

Testdisk has been clocking through since I last posted. Had to leave computer for a while during which time Read Error appeared. I have attached view of screen at present. May have to close down soon. how do i stop program so i can restart checking tomorrow?

I am closing down for the night now. attached how far testdisk had got.

I will resume tomorrow.

thanks to all who have been helping me today. I shall try again tomorrow:)

I think these give you a good start. You have the option to attempt recovering data using a program, or have a shop there plug the external into a laptop drive cable to access the data directly.

Externals are normally laptop hard drives so in your case, with an external, I think you need the cable to plug it in directly to a motherboard, rather than an enclosure which sets it up to be an external USB drive.

Hopefully there will be even more software suggestions (freeware?) and maybe some UK shop or do-it-yourself suggestions.