Saving an external hard drive partition delete(aka data recovery)

So there I was, reinstalling the windows xp os ( operating system. Like windows xp or 7 or mac osX) on my desktop that I had built before. Put the installation disc in and start the install process. After you go through the scan of the hardware it goes to this screen:

You then press enter to go to the terms and conditions:

 Press F8 to go to the pre-installed windows os and press ESC:

 That will lead you to this screen:

Now, I circled the FAT32 because usually nowadays we use a file format called NTFS. This is important to know before you download any partition recovery program. Because, the program may not be compatible with that file format. For my windows install it showed two hard drives with NTFS partitions. One was the drive that I wanted to re-install windows on and the other was the external hard drive. So, when I got to the screen above. I thought that both drives were the same drive... I deleted the partitions on both of the drives... :-/ I realized after I deleted the second hard drive partition that it was was the external hard drive with the 10 years worth of photos on it. Oops... :) I thought that I had lost the photos forever. But, in talking to my dad I found out you could save it if you didn't reformat the drive! I was like "YES!!!". So, here is how I fixed it:

What I first did was download a program from CNET onto my laptop called:

I used the CNET installer to install it. You go through the install process and open the program.

In here you select the hard drive you want. In this case I want the WD10EADS External USB Device. Click next. The next screen should look like this:

I left it as is... Click next. Next screen should be like this:

I would go with the fast option first... Like they recommend on the program. Click next. Then you should get a screen like this:

You have to select the partition that you want to recover. Once you select it you have to wait a long time for it to scan:

Click proceed. If it did not find your partition, do a deep scan. If it did it will repair the partition.

Hopefully this won't happen to you... But, if it does, you now know the basics to recover a partition from a hard drive. Please leave comments/concerns/questions/freakouts and advice on other ways to do this! :)

Sources: cnet, Wikipedia and Windows to Internet