I need serious help here -

I have a 200 GB external hard drive. Today it wasn't giving it a letter drive. So I started playing around with it to try and give it a letter. I don't know what I was thinking but I selected to partition a 200gb section of the drive. It then started formatting the drive. I freaked out and quickly pulled the USB cable so it won't kill my data. When I plugged it back in it gave me a letter but when i click on it it says it must be formatted.

I have a lot of info on there that is very crucial and not backed up.

I looked for data recovery products but they all are way over my budget – and quite frankly I don't know if that's what I need.

I'm a college student working like a dog to pay my tuition and to make some money.

I need some advice oh faithful friends.

Unless you get a better tip from someone else here, there are professional data recovery services which check out e.g. burned PCs. And perhaps less extensive there might by sysops/ computer help people in your area. Maybe the yellow pages?

Option 1: Try winhex, you might be able to get all your data back using this.

else try professionals like http://kurt.hu/

Software isn't going to work if no drive letter is assigned and it asks to be formatted. PCB swap is an option (must be same model number, and date of manufacture as close as possible to original drive). Other than that, there's not much you can do on your own. Professional data recovery will be expensive. These guys offer free quote. http://www.cbltech.com
Good luck. JT

JT

It assigned a drive letter now that I partitioned it – it just wants to format it. The reason why I got myself into this mess was because it didn't assign it a drive letter.

I downloaded the trial version of DiskInternals NTFS Recovery 2.0 and ran it and I think it got everything (or at least almost everything – I'm not sure) Just to actually have it recover it will cost me like $100 – $100 that I don't have.