On 19/12/09 23:28, Stewart Robertson wrote: > What would be the best thing for me to do in this situation? Is it > possible to restore the partition to NTFS and continue as if nothing has > happened? What exactly does fdisk do when you format to ext3? >
I don't fancy your chances of getting the partition back, although it might be possible. However, I would expect you to get most or all of the documents back. My personal favourite tool is photorec (it does recover more than just photos), from the same people as TestDisk which is coincidentally the tool I would suggest is most likely to recover the partition as a whole if it is possible. Re: Christmas presents, I'd suggest getting her an external drive for backups (and do it now, as it'll be a convenient destination for recovering data). If you end up re-installing Windows and putting her files back, chances are it'll then run a lot faster after the fresh install so you might end up better off than you started (I might be clutching at straws there though). See here: http://www.cgsecurity.org/wiki/TestDisk http://ubuntuforums.org/archive/index.php/t-916137.html On the plus side, I don't think formatting really does all that much to the disk so I'd be very surprised if you struggle to get the files back. If you plan on doing anything with the disk (eg recovering the partitions in place) make sure you backup the whole disk as an image first. I'd suggest that the external hard drive you buy as a Christmas present is 2-3 times the size of the hard disk you want to recover so you have space for the image and the data separately as necessary. -- Mark Rogers // More Solutions Ltd (Peterborough Office) // 0844 251 1450 Registered in England (0456 0902) @ 13 Clarke Rd, Milton Keynes, MK1 1LG _______________________________________________ Peterboro mailing list Peterboro@mailman.lug.org.uk https://mailman.lug.org.uk/mailman/listinfo/peterboro
