How can I recover lost data on hdd

[Squibbit]

My friend's computer HDD doesn't work anymore since yesterday. I tried all sorts of bios settings, cable and jumper combination's but the bottom line is that the computer would not recognize the drive itself. It not even recognizes it during boot-up on Windows after reinstalling Windows onto his backup drive. I placed the damaged drive into my computer, but the same thing happened on my computer.

Then I placed the hdd on an IDE channel and luckily the hdd got detected. My primary hdd was a SATA drive, so all I had to do was unplug my backup drive. Windows recognized the new hardware and installed drivers for it.

Now my problem is that the Disk Management utility shows the physical drive (80GB drive with 2 partitions) as only 7.5GB in size. I also noted that my computer is very slow since when the damaged drive is attached.

I have Windows XP Pro x64 edition. So how can I recover the hdd and the data in it?

[mv]

It seems to me your drive has some serious errors and sadly I don’t think there is any data recovery software which will help you in this case.

I will recomend you to look for a reliable data recovery company. I know it will cost you some bugs but that is the safest and optimum solution in your case.

[southparx]

If I were you then I would have gone hired a company providing data back ups. Better go for manual back up as suggested before.

[ireport]

Better to give ur harddisk to good backup recovery center the will recover ur data using them technique