[SOLVED] Recover from deleted ext2 partition

[theplen]

Well, this is my story. I was installing windows vista on my computer, so I backed up everything to a external drive which was formatted with ext2. I then proceeded to install windows vista. When I got to the partition section I tried installing windows vista to my raid 0. When it didn't work I decided that I would delete all my existing partitions and create a new one. Well in my haste I accidentally deleted my ext2 partition from my backup drive that was still connected. As soon as I realized what I had done I shutdown the windows install and disconnected my external drive. This is the current state of my drive from parted:

Model: WD 15EADS External (scsi)
Disk /dev/sdb: 1500GB
Sector size (logical/physical): 512B/512B
Partition Table: msdos

Number Start End Size Type File system Flags

(parted)

I know that the drive only had one partition before and that it took up the entire disk and it was ext2 (maybe ext3).

Any suggestions on how I may be able to recover my files.

Thank you!

[oz]

Hello and welcome!

The best tool that I know of for partition table and data recovery is TestDisk:

TestDisk - CGSecurity

You can find it on many different liveCD versions of Linux, including the Parted Magic LiveCD:

Parted Magic News

It might not work, but it's probably worth trying.

[theplen]

testdisk worked flawlessly within 5 minutes and a reboot all of my data was back .

Thank you so much for the suggestion!!!

[oz]

Glad it worked for you. It is reported to work far more often than not, but you never know until you try.

Don't hesitate to start new threads with any other issues.