[ale] Fwd: Hard Drive Death Spiral -- AKA Recovery Software?

[H P Ladds]

Hey All,

I have a hard drive that appears to be dieing, and I need data
recovery software. Any suggestions?

History of problem:

1. Somehow the partitions on the drive got out of order -- sda6 used
sectors (4376 - 4618) and sda5 had (4619 - 19457).
2. In an effort to correct this situation, I deleted the partitions
and recreated them using the same sectors.
3. I was hoping to do a e2fsck to recreate the superblocks and such.
This was a bad plan, and partition sda5 is not mountable.
4. I did not reformat the partition, so I believe the information is
still there.
5. I guess what I need to do is reformat the drive without destroying
the data on the disk, which is mostly impossible -- right?

Yes, I do have the info backed up on DVDs, but this seems to be a good
opportunity to develop some data recovery skills, and maybe I can see
what's on that disk I've had in the freezer for about two years.

H. Preston