If you want the best shot at retrieving lost data without resorting to a service, R-Studio Data Recovery is the bullet.

R-Studio Data Recovery Software (Figure A) is a data recovery application for PCs. This application is different from many others in that it doesn't just scan hard disks -- it can also open disk ...

R-Studio Data Recovery comes in a number of different flavors besides the plain $80 version I tested. For example, there’s a Network version for recovering across a network, and an Emergency version ...

R-Studio also works with Mac and Linux file systems, while Stellar Phoenix Windows Data Recovery Home is NTFS and FAT only.