In case of emergency there are a couple of good free tools around to help you out.
Recuva
Recuva (pronounced “recover”) is a freeware Windows utility to restore files that have been accidentally deleted from your computer.
Quick look at some features:
- Undelete files on your computer
- Recovery from damaged or formatted disks
- Recover deleted emails
- Full Windows OS support and many languages
TestDisk
TestDisk is a free data recovery software. It was primarily designed to help recover lost partitions and/or make non-booting disks bootable again when these symptoms are caused by faulty software, certain types of viruses or human error (such as accidentally deleting a Partition Table).
TestDisk can:
- Fix partition table, recover deleted partition
- Recover FAT32 boot sector from its backup
- Rebuild FAT12/FAT16/FAT32 boot sector
- Fix FAT tables
- Rebuild NTFS boot sector
- Recover NTFS boot sector from its backup
- Fix MFT using MFT mirror
- Locate ext2/ext3 Backup SuperBlock
- Undelete files from FAT, NTFS and ext2 filesystem
- Copy files from deleted FAT, NTFS and ext2/ext3 partitions
TestDisk can run under:
- DOS (either real or in a Windows 9x DOS-box)
- Windows (NT4, 2000, XP, 2003, Vista)
- Linux
- FreeBSD, NetBSD, OpenBSD
- SunOS
- MacOS