[Novalug] I did the unthinkable -- formatted the wrong partition

[Ken Kauffman]

I have used GetDataBack for NTFS on top of a Windows BARTPE disk (live boot
windows) with great success.

I would imagine if you found a similar software package for EXT3, you will
be able to recover your data completely.  I would suggest you make the
formatted hard drive a "secondary" drive to the OS and do your recovery that
way.

As long as you did not do a destructive format, you should still be able to
get to the physical data on the disk itself.  This process is time consuming
as it scans the entire disk bit by bit to do the recovery.

On a quick search I found this:
http://www.stellarinfo.com/linux-data-recovery.htm
http://www.datarecoverylinux.com/


Ken

-----Original Message-----
From: novalug-bounces at calypso.tux.org
[mailto:novalug-bounces at calypso.tux.org] On Behalf Of Mark Helmstetter
Sent: Wednesday, September 05, 2007 7:18 AM
To: novalug at calypso.tux.org
Subject: [Novalug] I did the unthinkable -- formatted the wrong partition

Last night/this morning I was swapping and moving some hard disks and 
data around on my personal server and I made a terrible, terrible 
mistake.  Somehow, I managed to type the wrong partition to mkfs.ext3.  
It's amazing what a difference 1 character and 2 carriage returns can 
make.  2 seconds later I realized my mistake and aborted the command, 
but it had already formatted about 50% of the disk.

This drive had some very important data on it, including lots of 
personal photos that most of which I do not have a backup of (yes, shame 
on me).  Unfortunately it was an almost full 500gb drive, of which only 
about 60gb really matters right now.

Is there any chance of recovering any of this data?  My understanding is 
that unlike the MSDOS format command, the ext2/ext3 format is a 
destructive one.   Does anyone have any experience with the 
"professional" data recovery services?

Thanks in advance,
Mark
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