Data recovery (NTFS and HFS???)

[Boyboy]

My sister had this portable HDD in NTFS or FAT32 mode.

 

She formatted it in her mac before copying everything to the mac first

 

Now my question is whether I can use freeware to recover the entire volume for her. She did a simple format only, not something really drastic like writing data to the HDD. I told her to try Data Rescue II which is for mac.

 

But i'm wondering whether there are issues with the data being on an NTFS/FAT32 volume previously. and whether there are free windows apps which can recover from HFS volume. i know there are such tools but they cost abt 80 USD or so and i'm cheapo...

 

I'm also not intending to pay someone to do it cos from the other thread on data recovery, it seems like it costs a few hundreds to do it. I rather try it myself. in any case her data isn't really worth much though i'd like to try to help her if i can.