Data recovery, gone without a trace?

[CoW]8(0)]

One of my hard drives contained some fairly important data which was overwritten.

Before the overwrite, the drive was fairly close to full capacity, so I'm fairly certain the overwrite covered some of the files.

But I've read that even when files are overwritten, the head of the drive never writes to the same place on the platter twice, so the remaining bits of the previous file can still be there.

Now I ask, can I recover my data?

What are my recovery options? The data was fairly important, so I may be willing to go to extremes to get it back. So please do no hesitate to list them.

 

[unhappy_mage]

Can you, personally, recover the data? Almost certainly not. But someone like drivesavers.com almost certainly can, for several hundred dollars. I've heard good things about them from desperate people.

HTH

 

[CoW]8(0)]

Well the celebrity testimonials on that site aren't encouraging. I don't hold much stock in the recommendations of the most computer illiterate people in the world

Are there any other options out there? I would especially be interested in recovering this data myself.