Recover an HDD

Yet another one of those threads asking for HDD recovery programs. I would google it, but I know it'll come up with high cost ones, or naff pointless ones.

I was installing Windows earlier, and had my external HDD plugged in...fine, apart from the fact that I did 'delete partition' on it, as it said it had Windows installed on it, I then realised just which drive I'd done it to! Not the main one I was using, but my external with all my data on it (backing up for a reinstall).

Now, are there any programs out there that can fix this rather stupid error of mine as I'd like my 200GB of data back!

I'm currently on Vista, but have also got a clean install of XP Pro, so I can take programs for either OS platform.

The main reason for asking here as well is I know I'll get decent recommendations, and usually this place has a fast response time. :)

Cheers in advance.

im not sure if the trial will re-allocate it, but i have used this ( i have the full suite)

http://www.soft32.com/download_7656.html active partition recovery.

let me edit this in as its free http://www.cgsecurity.org/wiki/TestDisk

same thing m8

Cool, thanks very much, hopefully it'll sort out my rather stupid error nice and easily. :)

yeh from what i remember its very easy to rebuild if its just a delete partiton command.

takes a matter of seconds to do it as well..

Thank you very much Gonzo, it's all fixed and working correctly now. All it needed was the table structure to be rebuilt, which the one that runs in TestDisk fixed for me. :D

Again, thank you. :)

nice 1 fella :)