I shot myself in the foot!

[twodayslate]

I downloaded ubuntu to my slave drive. The problem is that for some reason my C: drive is my slave drive. I used the whole partition for Linux so all my windows files are gone. Is there any possible way to get them back? Thanks a bunch!

off topic:// Did you guys change the layout? Looks better.

[Lazydog]

<sound of taps being played>
I believe you are SOL
</sound of taps being played>

[Cabhan]

There are some applications out there that can attempt to read the raw data on the drive (and not what the OS reports as being files), and can therefore attempt to recover files that have been deleted but not written over. You can Google for such programs.

However, as to the general problem, there is no way to guarantee the success of such a thing, or to recover everything. Sorry. In the future, be 100% sure that you're doing the right thing, or back up your files. And a good rule to follow is that you can never be 100% sure.

[drl]

Hi, twodayslate.

I am sorry to hear of your problem.

If you had only simply downloaded Ubuntu, that would not have been such a problem. It sounds like you installed it. If you did that, then the disk was probably repartitioned and formatted with one of the Linux filesystems. If that is the case, then, as the others have said, it is very unlikely that anything can be recovered. There are, of course, very expensive recovery services that will attempt anything you pay them for.

Some installs will attempt to save Windows partitions, but such partitions may become not readily visible. It's possible that your files are still there. Tell us in more detail what you did.

The real lesson here is two-fold: as Cabhan said, you can never be 100% sure. We all need to accept the fact that we make mistakes. That's one reason to make backups. The next time the problem may be with hardware -- it is not a question of if your (say) disk will fail, it is is question of when. That's the other reason.

So let us know. If you did trash the entire disk, then accept reality and move ahead, bruised, but wiser ... cheers, drl

[twodayslate]

Can any one point me to the file recovery program/company? It needs to be free or relatively inexpensive ($10 for a guaranteed success).


Thanks a bunch for the quick and well thought out replies!

[oz]

($10 for a guaranteed success)

Not sure, but I doubt that you can get guaranteed success at any price.

You could take a look at TestDisk for possible recovery. It's included with lots of the Linux liveCDs being put out now, including the popular PartedMagic LiveCD.

Let us know how it goes.

[twodayslate]

Thanks, just what I was looking for!

Will test these things out and get back to you.