Hah! DOS also includes a valuable tool by the name of recover.exe. Back in the days of DOS 3, trying to restore some deleted Leisure Suit Larry saved games from my 80286 PC, I had the good sense to go and use it...

C:\>RECOVER
RECOVER [drive:][path]filename

C:\>RECOVER C:
[much grinding, thrashing, wailing and gnashing of a 40 meg MFM drive 
+for a very long time]

C:\>DIR
... FILE0001.REC
... FILE0002.REC
... FILE0003.REC
.
.
.
... FILE0040.REC
         40 File(s)      21,505,356 bytes
          0 Dir(s)       20,102,016 bytes free

C:\>
[much screaming, kicking, and pounding on desk by a thirteen-year-old 
+kid, for a very long time]
[download]

Oh, the memories...

For the confused or non-amused, I lifted the following explanation:

2. RECOVER ... The worst example of RECOVER's deadliness is when you use it on a hard drive. RECOVER sees these thin +gs called subdirectories and assumes they're all bad files. So it convert +s each of your subdirectories into a FILExxxx.REC file. Tada! Instantly every + file on your hard drive is effectively gone. Why does Microsoft keep such a + deadly program around? To prove that RECOVER.EXE should be deleted from your +hard drive, I should point out that the many disk-repair utilities in both +Central Point Software's PC-Tools and Symantec's The Norton Utilities are writ +ten specifically to recover from the RECOVER command. [download]

   MeowChow                                   
               s aamecha.s a..a\u$&owag.print