Please help - disaster

[maccy99g]

Hi there,
While trying to install OPEN SUSE 11.1 on my computer which had two hard drives, one with windows and the other was filled with my backup (downloads, music, documents, spreadsheets, work related stuff), I accidentally installed SUSE on the backup drive.

I intended to wipeout Windows XP but instead i wiped out my data drive. Is there any way to recover the data back from that drive.


Please let me know.

[Irithori]

Well, in theory, a lot of files are destroyed, as their blocks have been overwritten with new data.
Also the structural elements of the former filesystem are gone.
This cannot be reverted.

But not all your data has been overwritten.
Puzzling that together again is quite complicated and time consuming.
It will also not bring back all files.

Your best chances are
TestDisk - CGSecurity
and
PhotoRec - CGSecurity

Good luck

[oz]

TestDisk and PhotoRec as suggested above are the best two apps for recovering partition tables and data that I know of. If they don't work, you are probably out of luck unless you want to pay some data recovery service to perform the procedure for you.

[MikeTbob]

Keep in mind too, if your data is that important, every time you fire up your machines hard drive, you are possibly overwriting more data that was deleted. For really important stuff you need to disconnect the drive and use another machine to recover the data.