James Sweet wrote:

There's some really good tools out there, unfortunately I forget the name of
the one I used, but I found a free demo of it online a couple years ago.
Google for data recovery software and try one out. A word of caution though,
if the data is valuable, take the drive to a pro, you risk destroying it
beyond recovery by attempting to recover it yourself.

Thanks for the input. There's nothing on it of such value that I can't live
without it !

I am however curious since I've not come across such a fault before and I'd like
to attempt a fix if only as an exercise.

I've never previously 'lost' or needed to 're-install' an installation of
Windows you see. Short of total mechanical/electrical failure I'd like to
maintain that record.


Graham