Trying to recover deleted files, need some (advanced) help

Any insight on this matter will be greatly appreciated. Thank you all!

Ok, long story, so I'll try to do it in point form:

- I had my HDD partitioned:
Partition A: 25Gb HFS+ (OSX)
Partition B: 65Gb NTFS (WIN7)
Partition C: 365 NTFS (STORAGE)

- I had documents in Partition B that I forgot to backup

- I repartitioned my HDD:
Partition A: 100Gb HFS+ (OSX)
Partition B: 355Gb NTFS (WIN7)

- I found a tool called Recuva that can recover files from my current Part B.
It doesn't detect my Part A though, because it is in HFS+

My question now: Is it a good idea to delete volume A and repartition it under NTFS, and then run Recuva on it? Because my data was stored under NTFS filesystem, but now that volume is using HFS+ filesystem.




Background info:

I know that when a file is deleted, it is not overwritten immediately. So I'm guessing because my old files are now in the middle of the new volume, they would not have been (completely) overwritten when I installed OSX on the volume.
However, what I'm not sure about is whether or not a volume gets overwritten when it is repartitioned under a new filesystem.

Every time I repartitioned, I used the same procedure:
Load up Win7 disk, then Shift+F10 to bring up cmd

Code:

diskpart
select disk 0
clean
create partition primary size = x
create partition primary size = x
format fs = ntfs quick
exit
exit

 

Not terribly likely to work due to the installation of OSX. Not sure how/if it fragments files on write. But it's worth a shot, especially if the files were very valuable.

 

I found a program called TestDisk that claims that it scan a HSF+ volume and recover files in NTFS

I have no idea if it'll work but I'll try it first before I decide to delete the volume and potentially causing more deletions.

 

A little follow-up, as documentation:

TestDisk recovered a lot of files, but they were all renamed to jibberish and I did not want to go through the hundreds of thousands of files.

I bit the bullet and deleted the HSF+ volume and repartitioned it in NTFS using the following:

Boot up Win7 install disk, Shift+F10 to bring up cmd

Code:

diskpart
select disk 0
list part //found HFS+ partition to be part 1
select part 1
delete part
create partition primary size = 102400
format fs = ntfs quick
exit
exit

I then ran Recuva on it, and though I could not completely retrieve all my files, I did manage to grab the few that were important to me (lucky break?).

So the answer: Yes, it was a good idea to do what I mentioned in my first post if you ever get stuck in a similar situation.