Is data recovery an option after a hard reset?

have posted the drama about the htc hero im trying to rescue the data from. have found methods to access but they are only possible if usb debugging was activated BEFORE the phone was locked. mine is (of course) not.

is it possible to do data recovery after a hard reset to access/ recover data???

does it clear it TOTALLY or does it dump to a recovery file and then zero out?

does anyone have experience with this method actually working???

gotta be an easier way to do this...