Hi Everyone,

OK - I had some computer problems recently (I think caused by a defective Seagate 1.5TB drive (failed badly)). I also have a 500GB IDE hard drive divided into 4 partitions (which appears to be working fine (no clicking or smoke). Somehow the partitions disappeared on the 500GB, I managed to recover two using Partition Commander 10. However the two others are showing as unallocated space and RAW. I have run every file recovery software program I could find from TestDisk to Recuva etc. none of which seem to "see" any data on the missing partitions. When running TestDisk it shows lots of partitions including one for Macs! I have not formatted or saved or defragmented etc. so I believe the data should still be there. I run a dual boot system XP and Vista (neither system restore worked). I therefore have the following questions...

What could have caused this situation?
Why could I recover two but not all the partitions?
Why does the recovery software not see any files?
Is there a way to rebuild the two damaged partitions (I was thinking of a quick format) to better facilitate the file recovery process?
Could this be a problem with heads and sectors?

All of my "IT" friends are claiming ignorance of MFT's, Partition Tables and file recovery (including putting the 1.5TB hard drive in the freezer and recovering 100% of the lost data (worked like a charm)) so I am hoping someone may be able to help via the interweb!