I'm so sorry. What a dreadful experience! The fear of such an occurrence is what spurred me on to set up a removable backup system with Western Digitals "My Passport Ultra" some time ago. That plus having to reload my own system from scratch at 3:00 AM several years ago when Mother Nature caused the same problem you've just experienced.

This program...linked below and ready for installation...used to be touted quite often here [with numerous accolades] regarding the problem you're experiencing. However...I, personally, have never used it so I can't attest to it's success or thoroughness. Piriform is trustworthy site and I doubt they would offer anything harmful to their followers/users.

http://www.piriform.com/recuva

It is my own fault for not backing up. I purchased an external drive about 8 months ago to use for backups of the computer and just never installed it - no excuse at all. Of course, now I have it installed, but there is very little to backup. I have used Piriform's Crap Cleaner and was always impressed with it. Will take a look at what you have linked. Thanks, Anne.

It very much depends on what you mean by "crashed." "Crashed" typically is defined as a sudden shut down of the computer, either due to hardware or software. That doesn't necessarily mean the computer is permanently broken or that the contents of your hard disk drive are inaccessible. If, for example, the motherboard failed the hard disk drive can usually be easily moved to another machine where data on the drive will be accessible. Even the in worst case, which would be the physical failure of your hard disk drive, the data is generally still available. Unfortunately, it generally means professional and expensive data retrieval.

Maybe you can tell us what's going on with your computer and we can take it from there.

Yeh, what Mike says . . . will the computer turn on ? Or it turns on, but there's nothing left on the disk.

What you're talking about though, if the partitions and files on the drive seem lost, is "Recovery".

A classic program for recovering files is TeskDisk, but if you're not used to dealing with partitions, command line, and so on you'd probably find it challenging. It's very powerful and I've had good luck with it.

Some links :
Five Best Free Data Recovery Tools - Lifehacker.com
How Can I Recover Data from a Dead or Erased Hard Drive? - Lifehacker.com

But tell us more what's going on - I bet it's not that bad.

ps : Are you in Walnut Creek, CA ? Because I'm in San Francisco - could probably talk you through it.

Downloaded recuva and it ran for hours, but did not retrieve my pictures. I just gave up on every getting them back. Then, today, what a surprise.

I am still loading software and getting the computer back to the condition it was in, as much as I am able to do so. I have also used Picasa for many years, so downloaded that and lo and behold, it started loading all of my pictures and scanned documents. Who would've thought that would happen, not me for sure. I am a happy camper right now.

Hallelujah! Thank you sooo much for reporting back about the success. Now we all have a history marker for Recuva. I hope I never need it...but it's great to know it does the job it advertises to do. What a nice feeling!!!