?? I have to admit, I don't understand from your post what he actually did with the files/docs...simple copying can't erase them....but anyway, all I can offer now is sympathy and good wishes.

Yeah, there ARE companies that can recover almost anything....but they don't work cheap

John...your post confirms my one experience trying to backup a drive and then restore it....the mind boggles at discovering there is no way to USE the backup easily via M$ utilities. I just saw a post about this today in a usenet group. I am following it to see what I can learn about doing a complete, safe backup. (I know there are simple daily/weekly file backups one can do to preserve everyday data...I just want to know 'how' to do the more heavy-duty things for emergency reference.)