Hi.. I BADLY need help. I had to format my windows hard disk, so i stored some CRITICAL and totally first-importance data (university exam-related!!) on my linux hard disk . i first formatted the windows disk. i reinstalled windows and obvoiusly MBR was overwritten so i started up my linux using the setup dvd. (i use SuSE 10) so i started up yast 2 and told it to use GRUB to boot manage. When i rebooted i had some strange error mentioning my swap partition and fo NO REASON AT ALL, my whole partition was damaged and became unreadable. I used several data recovery software but none seems to be able to recover my data! I could only have a raw recovery of 8000 files with no names, i don't want to open every single file until i know that there is no other solution to this problem it would take weeks... I don't understand what could damage so badly this partition to make it totally unreadable, i only changed the damn boot manager and rebooted!! Please please please i really need to recover this data!!!

If I understand your problem correctly, the your partition table was messed up.

I would recommend TestDisk to try to restore the partition table. I have not used it but have heard that it has helped quite a few people. Just boot from a live CD and download and then run it.

If that doesn't work you could also try gpart which I've used sucessfully before.

Good Luck.

i am actually using testdisk, but i can't fix anything with it. If i analyze the disk where the linux partition is installed, i can find no lost partitions to recover. There is even no EXT2/3 superblock to recover any data. i will try testdisk, i hope i can make it run from rescue disk on the suse boot dvd... any other ideas?

if you had used the "search" feature (above) you'd have found threads referencing R-studio by R-tools. Their URL is http://www.r-tt.com/

i admit i didn-t use the search too much, but i searched upside down the whole web, i can assure you, i did about 2 days of search and tried almost everything.. that-s why im asking here.. besides, i already tried r-studio but with no success... i am still testing gpart though. after using this command: gpart/dev/hdb i only find the swap partition, and the ext2 is detected as unused, maybe is it because im using a live linux distro? In that case it would not have been detected at all. what would this mean?