recovering partition on external drive

In the process of upgrading to Win 7 from XP, I backed up my data to an external drive. When installing I chose to adjust the partition on the internal drives. I stupidly left the external one connected and assumed it to be a partition of my 2nd internal drive, so repartionioned all :-o, prior to reformatting.
Luckily I only repartitioned the external drive, and have NOT reformatted.

What is the best current software, share/freeware or pay to recover my data? Preferably the former
NB. I have tried Recuva, and it, nor indeed Explorer recognise the disk. PC Inspector finds the physical drive, but no logical drive for it.
I also checked here, but ratings and popularity apply to all programs, and one, Recover 4 All Pro 2.52 is popping up to the top of the list is from 2002, so hopefully someone with more current experience can advise.

As an afterthought. is it worth weeding out some of the older stuff from our database, to avoid that scenario?

 

I'm not entirely sure that I understand what you did to the drive nor what type of backup data you had on it (simple file copy vs. disk image) but I think you're looking for one of these two programs:

http://www.majorgeeks.com/files/details/hdd_raw_copy_tool.html
http://www.majorgeeks.com/files/details/unstoppable_copier.html

 

If you haven't formatted the external drive you could also attempt to recover the old partition using a partition recovery tool such as MiniTool Partition Recovery:

http://www.minitool-partitionrecovery.com/partition-recovery/windows-7-recovery-partition.html

 

Well Rusty, your first response didn't address the issue, which was recovering the lost partition, rather than the fact that the data was backed up, regardless of the method, but your second has hit the spot beautifully.
Recovery took seconds rather than hours, and I'm now enjoying a music video in celebration.

I love you, and I want you to have my babies. Thanks v much

 

I'm glad it worked out for you. And trust me, you do not want a mini version of me running around anywhere on this planet.