if u r a professional photographer, haven't I heard of something called a backup? dumbo!

ydi for not backing it up when knowing u have a crappy computer

I smell multiple law suits! Keep your ignorant husband away from it in the future... fycl (f your customers' lives) ydi for not backing up

YDI for so many reasons but mostly 1. Backups exist for a reason. 2. People who don't even know what formatting is shouldn't be working on computers. And by the way, the computer never "tells" you you need to format. It may give you the option, but it never suggests it and certainly not without warning you that everything will be erased.

ydi for letting your stupid husband touch your workcomputer without backup

Your data is still all there. It can be recovered and doesn't cost as much as some people make it out to be. It can be difficult and can add up because of time and other factors though. As long as you haven't started writing new data to the drive, it should be easy and not take too long. I recover lost data all the time for clients.

How could he "fix" the hard drive and not know what formatting does? I hope he only did a "quick" format, because if he did the longer one, the data cannot be recovered. Next time, do what several suggested and keep a backup on another computer or a remote service, or on a data DVD.

if you were a professional you would have had multiple backups. yes, your husban shouldn't mess with stuff he doesn't understand. but if you lost everything it's because YOU'RE an idiot.

YDI for letting a computer-illiterate "fix" your harddrive with essential data on it.... and for not having just such essential data backed up against equipment failure.

I take it you didn't know your husband didn't have a clue what he was doing, or I'd have to assign partial blame to you for letting him do the fixing just because he's a man and they're "supposed to" be good at fixing things. Still, recovery might be possible, especially if he just did a quick format instead of a thorough one. First, do not panic. Second, do not at all write to the drive. The last time I had a mishap of this caliber, I used a linux bootable CD called "recovery is possible" (RIP) and using the tool "TestDisk" it recovered everything I lost when I went ahead and deleted all my partitions *before* checking that my files in hidden folders had been backed up. (Luckily I thought of that before re-formatting the entire drive as one partition - I don't think I could have recovered them then) TestDisk simply recreated my partitions, and all was back to the way it was before. I'm pretty sure it can recover files wiped by (quick) formatting as well, and if not, there are other tools on that CD that can. TestDisk also saved me a second time when my power supply died, taking down the harddrive's boot sector in its blaze of glory. The winXP install CD's recovery console couldn't fix the boot sector, but TestDisk wrote me a new master boot record and I could boot again. There are several programs dedicated to recovering deleted files, whether they've been deleted the usual way or lost to a format. Good luck, and remember to back up your important files regularly. (I feel like such a hypocrite for saying that since I haven't backed up mine for like a year, but at least I wouldn't disappoint anyone else than myself if I lost them)