Messed up partition table accidentally

Question

I was using gparted software in ubuntu 11.10 (using live cd). In which there is an option called create partition table, i clicked it and it removed the details of my entire partition. Now i'm not able to see any of my partition (it has windows 7 installed and my personal files). But since i have not formatted my hard disk, i guess the data should be still there. Is there any way i can fix this partition table?

Answer 1

I strongly suggest you to check this video: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EncqYP1ijFg&feature=player_embedded which shows the correct usage of testdisk in order to fix situations like that. Which was really useful for me in the past when faced an issue like yours, fully documented right here: Recovering deleted data from deleted partition- solved inside of the Israel Remix Team Distro.

I am sure you'll be able to find a way to bring back your partition if you follow the easy steps provided in the video by amzertech.

Parts of my experience is documented in this answer Formatted and lost 6 years worth of photo memories.. any way to get this back?, partially posted right here for your convenience:

1. First of all you calm down. Tranquil, if you erased or removed the partition's table, the data is still there. You need to find a way to bring it back, that's it.
2. The most you can keep the drive off new data, the best for your data. If you write new data, the older data will be replaced by the new as this starts using the clusters.
3. If possible, try not using MS based tools, which (in my case) just wrote a few clusters in the disk which made unusable some data. MS Recovery Tools (such as Easy Data Recovery and others) tries to read the partition table but it also writes some clusters which can't be fully read in order to recover the "usable part of the data". This may harm your data replacing the original allocation clusters with blank data which allows the software to gain access to the cluster itself.
4. Follow the instructions shown on the video documented by amzertech, which was embedded in the previous post and that clearly explains exactly what I did in order to recover my data.
5. If you follow these instructions, I am sure you are going to succeed. Even in the worst cases (how can a different case than mine be worst?) you will succeed if you follow this easy instructions. Remember, the data will remain intact if you leave the disk intact. The most things you do to the disk, will be the most risk your data is reaching.