If you can, dd the entire disk into chunks and save it cd-writable or tape NOW, before you do anything else. I have a python script which does this and saves md5 checksums of the result as well. Ask me if you want this.
I think you have a real task ahead of you to recover. However, if your really keen or clever, forensics tools like "The Sleuth Kit" http://sleuthkit.sourceforge.net/ or The Coroner's Toolkit http://www.porcupine.org/forensics/tct.html might help. Foremost (foremost.sourceforge.net) might help too; it ignores the file system structure and just looks for beginning and endings of files. So it needs distinctive files (e.g. jpeg) and contiguous files. Of course, there are commercial file recovery services for linux now, as well. Depends on what it's worth to you. Matt -- SLUG - Sydney Linux User's Group Mailing List - http://slug.org.au/ Subscription info and FAQs: http://slug.org.au/faq/mailinglists.html
