My laptop came with Windows and I stored some important data,

and then yesterday I tried to install Mint 17.3 Cinnamon with USB stick

But it looks like the Mint installation erased all the partitions re-wrote it

What is the best way to recover data for a Linux rookie?

Thanks

EDIT - I can think of the following Live Linux on USB - Ubuntu, Mint and Knoppix

You can try Photorec, but, frankly, the probability is that it's too late.

There are many recover programs out there. Some better than others. You would have a better chance with pictures and one file items than, say books that have many pages. partedmagic has some that might be useful, otherwise windoze based stuff might help like recover,not the right spelling.

You need a disk or usb, you can boot from that includes the recovery equipment/software.

Fred.

Might help or not

http://www.howtogeek.com/howto/15761...buntu-live-cd/

If using Puppy live cd (going by your user name)

http://murga-linux.com/puppy/viewtopic.php?t=98717

check this link: https://www.linux.com/learn/tutorial...recovery-tools

but as Frankbell pointed out, it might be too late.

If it is important, check any professional recovery service in your area that is quite trusted but if you got sensitive info on your hard drive then think twice before doing it or your data might end up somewhere else.

there is neat little program i like to use for recovering files called Recuva, which is what I think Fred Caro meant. I think i'ts only available for Windows though. I've never done this in Linux, so not sure. Like others above have said data might be corrupt or gone when trying to recover.

It probably just did a quick partition (re-wrote the partition table but didn't clean off the drive), so depending on where (physically) on the disk the data was stored, it might still be in-tact. The critical part is to STOP USING THE DRIVE. Do not boot into the OS you just installed. Boot into a live distro and scan the drive for files with photorec, dumping anything it finds onto an external drive. You might get lucky, but be warned...it's going to find a LOT of files, and you won't have any file names or extensions. You'll probably need to sort through thousands of files with names like "0012078237812" until you find what you're looking for.

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If only the partition table was overwritten and nothing was written into the new partitions, there are ways to recreate it. For example the standard parted program has a recovery command; run it from any LiveCD.

What is the command? If you give me the command name I will look further into the command.

I believe the command is 'parted rescue'. See the man page for parted.

First, you need to STOP using the disk. Second, you need to provide us with a lot more information before anybody here can reliably provide you with a possible data recovery plan.

What version of Windows was on the laptop? Does the laptop does into Mint or not?

It came with Windows 8.1 and then I upgraded to 10 and I put the ISO into a USB stick and the Mint installation says the installation was complete but when I tried to restart it it does not boot into Mint. Knoppix reveals that my old partition has been re-written

If it came with 8.1, it was using UEFI/GPT. Did you install Mint UEFI? Did you select the LVM option? If so, it overwrites everything. Some info on UEFI dual booting with windows at the link below. You could also download and run the boot repair software after burning it to a CD and select the "Create Bootinfo Summary" and post the link here.

https://help.ubuntu.com/community/UEFI

https://help.ubuntu.com/community/Boot-Repair