hi guys, i need help. i was running fc6 and windows in dual boot config.my windows was acting up so i decided to do a factory recovery from dvd and it wiped out the wrong partition. i had an ext3 partition with all my data and its been formatted to ntfs. is there any way i can reverse it and save my data? need help guys.
system spex r;
* intel d 2.6
* 250gb hadd X 2( hdd in question had the first partition ext3(170gb and the rest for windows. so the recovery program formatted the first partition on the hdd)
* 1gb ram

In short, no. You could try a dd on the device (see info dd for details) which might give you an inode-by-inode listing of the contents, but -- unless you're really lucky -- your data is likely to be scattered all around the partition, and re-assembling it by hand can be tedious.

Understand, though, that I've never looked at the ext2 format specifications, and there may be some easier way to proceed. (ext3 is just ext2 with journaling.)

<edit>
Oh, if your partition was part of a logical volume set -- which Fedora likes to use -- your problems may be even greater. Recovering a LV without a backup is usually impossible.

It's probably occured to you by now, but doing any partition changes without a good, current, backuo is not, generally, good practice.
</edit>

I was just building a new FC6 system on a USB drive (as a backup of sorts) and noticed the ddrescue command which (claims to) recover ext3 partition problem. Now, I really don't think that it could work when the partition type has been changed to NTFS, especially if the drive has been formatted, but you might want to check it out.