Accidentally lost data from external HDD

[MarkoSub]

Hello everybody,

I have a problem I don't know how to solve. Today I bought a netbook and while waiting for the new Ubuntu Unity release to come out, I thought of trying out Crunchbang instead of Windows that came with it. Browsing on my Ubuntu desktop machine, I found a guide for making Crunchbang live USB stick, and i followed the procedure. However, I made a very stupid mistake. The guide said I should enter the command:
sudo dd if=/path/to/iso/crunchbang-10-alpha-01-openbox-i686.iso of=/dev/sdX bs=4M;sync

where "of=...." part should be replaced with the name of the HDD. I forgot that I have an external HDD mounted and mistakenly copied the data to it.
After this, I cannot see the content of my external HDD anymore. Instead, i have this 620mb large Crunchbang-install device.

I know what I did was stupid, but is there a way to get the content of my HDD back? I have some valuable data on it, so any help would be very much appreciated.

Thankfully,

Marko

PS I haven't formated the external HDD after I bought it, so I believe it used FAT32 file system.

[MikeTbob]

Hello and Welcome. You can try the Parted Magic distro, it has test disk on it. This may help you.
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[devils casper]

Hi and Welcome !

Testdisk is for partition recovery. Does crunchbag installation has deleted partition of External disk? In that case, testdisk is best option.
Boot up from PartedMagic LiveCD or USB and execute testdisk on External Hard disk. It is available in Menu.

Testdisk will recover partition table but you have to use another software to recover lost data. There are a few tools like Photorec available for data recovery.

[MikeTbob]

Photorec is also in Parted Magic.

[oz]

Welcome to the forums!

Parted Magic is definitely a good way to obtain and utilize these apps.

Just in case you should need it, the documentation for using them can be found on their website:

TestDisk - CGSecurity

PhotoRec - CGSecurity

Check toward the bottom of the respective page for each application to find instructions on how to use it.

[devils casper]

Photorec is also in Parted Magic.

I am using PartedMagic for a long time but I think it's an old version. I didn't know that Photorec is available in PartedMagic. Downloading latest version now. Thanx Mike !

[MikeTbob]

I am using PartedMagic for a long time but I think it's an old version. I didn't know that Photorec is available in PartedMagic. Downloading latest version now. Thanx Mike !

Yep, yep, yep.
I got the newest version this past weekend and it's pretty sweet as I have come to expect from Parted Magic. Photorec is included. Be advised, they only support installing from Unetbootin now. You can still do it manually but I guess if you get pie on your face, then that's your tough luck.

[MarkoSub]

Hi guys,

Thanks for replying.
I tried with Testdisk. No success. It wouldn't see my external hdd partition.
I was advised to try with some Windows software and apparently PowerDataRecovery seems promising. It recognized my hdd partition, and is now scanning it. It will take long time, but it seems that the software is identifying lots of files&folders.