Deleted my Ubuntu partition

Question

I normally dual-boot with 12.04 and Win XP pro sp3 on a Thinkpad R60. I needed to reinstall windows because of problems piling up, so I ran the computer's built-in hard-disk recovery software. I told it not to mess with the other partitions, but somehow it deleted the Linux partition. That's what I was using to backup all of my windows files, so now everything I have is gone. I just ran the USB setup with linux, and the partition is deleted - it just shows it as empty space. Is there ANY way to get all of my files back?

Answer 1

I would recommend Recovery using TestDisk.

Boot Ubuntu from Live USB drive or CD, , run

sudo apt-get install testdisk

TestDisk is used to recover missing partitions and repair a corrupted one. It served me well in recent past to recover entire Hard disk , so i am suggesting it.

After installing ,open Terminal and run sudo testdisk to get this

Select the create to create new log file ,select the Hard disk you want to recover , Proceed upon selecting the Disk

Then select the Intel option , Enter to proceed further.

Analyse to search for Lost Partition

Then it will list the Current Partition Structure , select the Quick search option to list the Deleted partition .

If Found Nothing then select the Deeper search option to list the deleted partitions. It will probably list all the partitions created since the Disk was First used. You have to be extremely careful here.

For more in-depth instructions refer this Step-By-Step guide .If found proper listing of partitions , select the Write option and Reboot to see the changes. Best of Luck .

Also refer below options before trying this above , here

How to recover deleted files?

Mitch's answer here for RAW data recovery

Ubuntu help page on Data Recovery