Unformating a Hard Drive?

Heh.. Dad has an HD that he would like to restore what was once on it. Anyways I have looked up the tools somewhat.. but heck I never needed it before.. I ain't that careless. So far though it looks like I(or dad) would have to fork over money to restore it and it don't have anything that important on it... just would be nice.

So any easy tips you guys got.

Additional info-
There is no operating system that is actualy the drive dad wants restored.

Because of that I was looking for programs that run in DOS(seems norton unformat fits the bill, but meh that is in the utilities and ya gotta pay).


As I said it ain't ultra important stuff.. but I imagine sooner or later someone will ask me to restore deleted information for them. So I figure i may as well find out now.