When I was installing linux on my families computer, I accidentally formatted the shared drive containing all the files. This is very bad, I could be in a lot of trouble. Does anyone know a way to recover all the files that disappeared? I don't know the current status of the drive, because when I boot into windows and try to open it, it asks if I want to format it. It seems as though the data disappeared but it is not yet formatted. Any help would be greatly appreciated, any way to recover the files either in linux or in windows, as long as I can get them back. One other thing, if it matters the data was on a seperate partition of the main drive.

Ouch, I can feel your pain. There are some very good pieces of data recovery software, but (the ones I know of) cost money. I did test one free one that worked quite well, but this was 4 years ago and I can't remember the name of it today. I have no idea what you could do from a linux point of view, but I suggest searching google or download.com for data recovery software and try finding something that maybe has a 30 day trial or something similar.
Kevin

I feel your pain. I accidentally deleted photos I had taken of my Dad in his last months. No recovery was successful despite trying everything I could find.

What can I say ... accidents happen.

Show your Dad this thread and maybe he will go easy on you.

What was the filesystem type on that shared drive?

the filesystem type was fat32, and there is currently no formatted type, it is just space, so hopefully the data is still there somewhere. I guess the installation just half-formatted, because the data is gone, but it has no recognized filesystem.

Well... for all it's worth, you *might* be able to recover most of the data if you can rebuild the super-block for that drive.

I'm not sure how to go about that on a fat32, but it might be possible. It definitly can be done on an ext3.

Goodluck

jb1390 - Windows will not see the file system on that drive anymore as it is now formated as reiserfs. My best recommendation is to go to http://www.grc.com and purchase SpinRite 6. It costs about US$80, but is well worth it. From what I understand, it works with all Windows and all Linux file formats. I have used it numerous times to recover reformated drives or severely damaged drives. It is a small file that you end up installing to a 3.5" floppy and then boot the system using the floppy. Do NOT install the actual files on the drive you want to recover. Try this and I think you will be very pleased.

actually I already had the drive partitioned to accept linux, it just wiped it somehow. I got the data back using a program called file scavenger 3.0, and it managed to get everything.

Good info! I'll have to add that program to my list for the next crisis.