Data file recovery from Windows 7

A Macbook that was running OS X with data files and pictures was taken by someone without their permission.
That person then wiped the hard drive and installed Windows 7.
The Laptop has since been returned to the original owner and to her dismay realizes all her files have been deleted.
Is there any chance of recovering any of her previous OS X data files and pictures before she reinstalls OS X.

Kappy and Limnos are both correct, depending on what was done to the hard drive.
It's most likely that the person who put Windows 7 on the Mac did a quick erase, which would leave all but the first few cylinders of data on the drive untouched.
After changing the partition scheme to NTFS and and installing Win 7, then the data that will be difficult to impossible to recover will be those areas that were written over with the Windows OS files, the swap file it creates, and any other areas of the drive that were written over during that person's use of the Mac.
The first thing you will need to do before you can use either FileSalvage or Data Rescue 3, is boot to the disks the Mac came with, run Disk Utility from the DVD and change the partition back to Mac OS Extended. Neither of these recovery programs will read anything but a Mac drive. As in changing the drive to NTFS, you would only be overwriting the first few cylinders of the drive to do this. Just make sure not to install OS X. Only use the DVD to get the drive back to Mac OS Extended.
Since the drive will have no bootable system on it at this point, you will need to purchase one recovery program or the other on a bootable CD/DVD. The only other option is a bootable external drive so you can try the demo versions before purchasing. The external drive will also need to have enough free space to recover files to.
Now run either recovery program. As mentioned a few times now, getting any data back that was sitting on the areas overwritten with Win 7 are slim to none. But any data on the drive that was never written to during that time can be. What you recover all depends on what was sitting where.

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