OK there is a Boot CD as well and a 'Recover Partition' option which I shall try
PS If I can't recover the partition I have backups of most of the data which are TV movies from a PVR still on the PVR HDD - so I just have to do everything again.
Still worth the try
The partition is only 70Gb (NTFS) and I have spare 80Gb HDDs
I wlll keep you informed
chookhouse 05:07:17 02/05/2012