I have recovered partitions fully intact and working perfectly too many times to count.
There are some great apps. that will do it. Paragon includes a partition undelete in many of their products ( much improved in the 10 series).
The partition recovery in the Free Partition Wizard is astonishingly good - ( tho. it only supports FAT and NTFS).
Test disk is also excellent.
How do you mean you don't believe in it - the same way you don't believe in Father Christmas? LOL.
LOL Amazingly, I have had success with recovery many times as well. And a few failures,too. The point is, as ComputerAge suggested, you are wasting valuable time, and your more than likely headed toward losing all your data anyway.Doesn't sound like you have much to lose by attemptimg a recovery.