recover data from harddrive

[shaily]

Hi,
I have the 40GB Lap Top Hard Drive (Toshiba MK-4019 GAXB) that was corrupted and all partitions disappeared. Look like that it was resulted from the installation of Win XP Service Pack 2 since I swapped another known to be in good order hard drive and all partitions disappeared. I have no other way but format the hard drive and reinstall Win XP Service Pack 1.Is there anyway that I can try to recover the data?Hope to get help from you.
thanks in advance.

[guinness]

Try Recuva, it might help to recover documents but probably unlikely to recover the whole drive.

[m^(2)]

TestDisk is more like it, AFAIK Recuva finds only deleted files on known partitions.

[donald]

I know you say that it has corrupted your partitions but ...

Have you tried a live CD?

I know of several people using a Live CD or USB to recover a Windows installation or its data.

I personally have used a live USB to recover files.

If everything is corrupted, or erased you will need something like the items mentioned already above.

[taotra]

Aside from Testdisk, you can also try PartitionRecovery and PC Inspector File Recovery. Both programs can recover lost partitions and are freeware and portable.

http://tokiwa.qee.jp/EN/PartitionRecovery/
http://www.pcinspector.de/Default.htm?language=1

If you can recover your partitions all your files should be there hopefully. So there is no need to recover the files individually.