Ok.

So, I left an Ubuntu CD in the disc tray because it was requestion during the installation of a couple of packages (apparently I hadn't removed the CD-repo from the sources.list).

Anyway, I since leave for christmas holidays all the while my step-father continues to use the machine. At some point he reboots, is greeted by the LiveCD (different background, no familiar icons) but he manages to start the install, let the guide reformat his entire drive and proceeds through a major part of the actual install - skips before the boot manager install though.


Anyway. This obviously destroyed the old partitions and with that his old files.

To be honest i cannot remember if the partitions were ReiserFS or Ext3.


Anyway. Is there any way to at least recover (in part) some of these files ?

The drive had around 40gb worth of data and the overwritten data which is present now is around 2gb of system data and possibly 2gb of swap.
This leads me to believe that the rest is merely "formatted" which often doesn't completely delete the data.

Is there any applications or similar I can make use of ?
I realise this isn't easy to answer, but know that any possible solutions would be *greatly* appreciated.

There's a lot of threads on LQ about data recovery. See if for instance this recent thread http://www.linuxquestions.org/questi...31#post3013131 gets you going. If it doesn't, please post your questions not there but here in your own thread.

I know there are, which is why I was reluctant to make one of my own

But the thing is, I didn't see any mention of one who was unaware of the previous filesystem as well as having overwritten a part of the old system with a new one.

No problem there. Maybe we do things a bit differently in comparison with other fora but we *require* you to create your own thread for your own questions. If you think about it it does make sense in that your questions stand a better chance in getting the attention they deserve.

I've added an URI in my first reply, have a look.