I was recently dealing with a badly damaged installation of Windows XP Home...it wouldn't recognize its modem or CD ROM drive, wouldn't run System Restore (couldn't even get the window open to try it), and generally had suffered a lot of loss due to the 318 virus instances I had removed from it. 

I decided to start clean.  I ran the Files and Settings Transfer wizard, moving all the files I needed to a safe place...then dropped the partition, reformatted, and reinstalled XP. 

With that done, I re-ran the F&S Transfer wizard to bring back the needed files...but found that that backup was only partial.  I was missing some 490+ jpg files (family photos) from it!

Now, to the point (thanks for hanging on this long).  After a bit of sweating, crying, and pounding of fists, I found RecoverMyFiles.com, which claims it will recover lost files even after a re-partition and reformat.  Let me tell you that it does exactly that!  I was able to recover all of those family photos in a couple of hours (the scan required after reformatting is a bit slow) without a problem. 

I'm not usually big on endorsements, but I highly recommend RecoverMyFiles.com.  It saved the day for me.