Hard drive access problems

My friend's wife has a lot of work on a hard drive that became inaccessible through Windows XP. I can clone it but not see any files on the original or clone.
EaseUS Data Recovery, PC Inspector, and Wise Data Recovery don't find anything or only finds deleted or raw files. Spotmau Boot Disk finds a partition on the clone starting at sector 62 and lists the files on it but it finds no partition on the original drive. How can that be? She has a lot of artwork for a computerized embroidery machine lost. Any suggestions greatly appreciated.

 

If you know anything about linux, boot up a Linux live CD and see if you can see the files.
Linux can see things that windows can not.

You also need to know how to burn an ISO and have a computer capable of burning a CD.

 

I tinkered with Linux some years ago. Which version would be best to do this?

 

This one has all the bells and whistles (but it might be larger than a CD - I haven't looked at this in a few years)
http://www.linuxmint.com/download.php
Try Cinnamon with the codecs. At least, it will be useful to you after you are done trying to retrieve files.

If you want small, someone here regularly puts in a good word for Puppy.
http://puppylinux.org/main/Download Latest Release.htm
This page explains how to boot it from a USB stick, if you don't want to burn
http://puppylinux.org/main/How NOT to install Puppy.htm

 

Thanks a bunch. I'll do some downloading and see what I can get accomplished with out screwing things up worse... lol