Long story short ... can't boot my laptop ... try using windows recovery but start a fresh install instead of recover [facepalm!] ... manage to halt it a few seconds in ... remove drive & put it into a caddy ... use RAW copy tool to create an .imgc copy on my NAS.

OK, so here's where the assistance of you experts is required: Reading through these forums everyone recommends not working on the original HDD but on the clone.

So how do I actually recover my files from the .imgc file? [I'm about to purchase a copy of R-Studio ... is that a good decision?]

This site has been a real education so far. Please help me complete it! Thanks.

R-Studio do a trial version, download that & then run a full scan on your image.
If R-Studio finds your files then purchase the software so you can save the files.
If you have overwritten the Master File Table (MFT) then your only chances will be a raw recovery (ie you will lose folder structure & file names as these are stored in the MFT)

Loki

Thanks loki for the info about the trial version

Think I've discovered answer to my own question. I'll post it here in case it's of any use to someone else in the future.

The .imgc file produced by the HDD Raw Copy Tool is actually a compressed image file apparently [I just used that because is the default].

You can recover files with R-Studio from a normal drive image file (.img) but not from a compressed one (.imgc) it would seem. So I spent another 12 hrs re-creating a .img file from the .imgc file and I'm about to let R-Studio go to work at scanning this image file overnight.

Appreciate this is probably nursery stuff for most ppl but that's where I'm at!

Thanks for the info Shieldsy.I Think your problem was ticking the default option 'Compressed image (R-drive compatible)' instead of the first one 'byte to byte image'. You have saved me a lot of time for next time I have one of these (Trust me I have done a lot more mistakes than this one the first time it happened lol).

How to convert imgc file to img?