The best program I've used it Get Data Back. It's not free but allowed me to recover files off a dying HDD that I couldn't get Windows to see properly. Don't know how it compares to other stuff though.

Same here. I use it all the time.

 

Richy,

 

It's not perfect but I suppose it's as good as you're going to get if you've written data over what you are trying to recover.

 

I think there is a forensic distro of Linux out there somewhere (I'm sure I've heard of it) and if you are as smart as Lucy you might have luck enhancing and zooming until you get the license plate number you seek.

Thank you very much, everyone, for your suggestions.

The recovery software that our guy used (locally - way to compound a problem (fail)) recovered file names, which makes me think it's just attempted to recover patches of old MFT and pull back files from that.

The recovery programs that come back with generic filename, while inconvenient to search through, theoretically actually find valid data to piece together, so it's worth a shot, especially as the priority here is photos (they're of a recently-deceased family member, which is the main reason I've not just written this whole debacle of as a learning experience for those involved)

And Matt, while I generally agree, it's conceivable that the software a professional service may have access to would be better at piecing togther whatever it finds than the freebies/cheapies you can grab off the Internet. They would also do some of that post-checking that Jon rightly mentions is so time-consuming.

Anyway, thanks again. I'll take a look at the various suggestions and see if we can have any more luck.

Since it's just photos use PhotoRec. So simple, full surface scan, recoverable stuff recovered. I think it'll even get the photos that are half written over.

As in, the half that is still there.