well after deleting a backup which I shouldnt have & it mysteriously not being in the Recycle Bin
I tried these on my backup partition
Recuva 1.14.321 - found absolutely nothing
Handy Recovery 1 -the free version linked to above by Braham - didnt seem to find anything - not what I was looking for at any rate
Back2Life - found absolutely nothing
File Recover 6.2.0.20 (PCTools) found a bunch of stuff, unnamed, no details about what they were, wouldnt restore them because it was a trial (again, a case of hiding the fact it had to be paid for*, never mind the price, not stating trial limitations clearly - on principle I've decided to avoid software that does this, unless I'm desperate

)
I threw in the towel at that stage, went & redid my lost work - I lost more time this morning faffing around with these than I actually lost with the deleted file

* on the page I went to at any rate -
found it from an add actually, & thought I'd try it cause PCTools are supposed to be good (I think)