i'm stupid

i accidentally reformatted my entire harddrive and all my life from linux. don't ask how or why but it was fast so i think it did a "quick" reformat. doesn't that mean that the data might still be on my harddrive and its recoverable? im in linux live cd right now.

thanks

 

Yes it's probably possible to recover the data with specialized software.

 

It might be possible, BUT WHATEVER YOU DO, DO NOT USE THE COMPUTER!! o all of your research on another computer. Don't install ANYTHING on that computer. You MIGHT be OK if you are only booting to an OS on the other partition, but I would not do it.

I've heard good things about "Get data back", and i'm sure you can do a google for "unformat".

 

http://www.restorer2000.com/ i formated the wrong hd once it got 80 gigs back. its not free tho

 

thanks a lot guys, but restorer2000 is for windows, and i can't install windows on that drive.. is there any that works with linux? everything i found was either linux for recovering linux partitions (ext) or windows for recovering ntfs/fat.

i can't seem to find one that works with linux but unformats ntfs

 

Try doing so from an External Drive loaded with Windows OS. Set Bios to boot from USB(if it supports that). Then run whatever program like restorer2000 from the external drive to fix you main drive.

If you don't have an external drive, just get a cheap 20GB or 40GB one. They usually cost below $60. That's if the info on your disk is that important to you.

 

Also google for "Bart's PE". That's a CD only windows you can boot to and run programs from. Unfortunately most of those programs, especially ones for NTFS, are going to be Windows only.

In linux, you can also take a full bit-for-bit image of the disk, and even in the unformatted state you'll have the data (also in an unformatted state). But it's a good last resort backup. You'll need to use the "dd" command and save the file to a disk that is as big or bigger than the disk you have. Something like:
dd if=/dev/sda1 of=/data/saved.file

 

thanks livefrmnyc and orev , i guess i would have to buy an external drive either way. as for this "dd" command. do I have to get a 320gb external harddrive for that? or does it undergo some sort of extreme impossible compression? thanks

 

"dd" is really a last ditch thing. You could use gzip to compress it, but that's not going to help you get the data back. With dd, you could save it to a compressed file, then try some recovery tools. If they don't work, you can dd the other way and restore, then try another recovery tool.

 

You shouldn't use that drive yet!
Try to set it as a slave in another PC, and then from that PC recover the data using a recovery software. Every time the HD moves will erase some recoverable data (that was authorized to overwrite but not yet overwritten)

 

Kind of off topic, but how differ would SSD HDs handle this? Would it be much easier to recover?

 

You'll have much better luck with Windows tools. Therefore take out the HDD, put it in to an external USB enclosure and use it with another Windows PC. That would be much easier and safer than booting windows off of an external drive to work on your internal drive; + you don't have to buy a HDD.

 

An SSD wouldn't make a difference. The way they are presented to the system makes them appear the same as a regular hard disk. Formatting and deleting files is done the same way.

 

I wrote the longest thread and I accidentally quit ff so I'll get straight to the point

I used a program called "testdisk" under a 'recovery is possible' linux distro and I got my partitions back. I know that because in ubuntu all the partitions are exploreable

Now a I have a few questions

1) my computer is booting off my data partition, how can I change that?
2) when I use grub to get the right partition, windows says it's missing a file something like "Windows\System32\winstart.exe"
3) My windows vista CD doesn't recognize that I have a vista installation, it asks me to "Load Drivers" (can anyone help with that?)
4) Where is the recovery console? Does it only appear when vista recognizes my vista installation? and also where was that good'ol "repair" that they had in the xp thing and it just copied the files again?

I'll be googling these meanwhile but any help will be much appreciated on any question thanks

 

o sorry i didnt even realize