hi to all,
anyone got any ideas on any method or available software that can be used to recover files deleted by the root user?
i guess this's probably impossible but i'm really desperate as i deleted some VERY important documents when logged in as root.
i'd be really grateful if anyone can help me outta this!
(btw i'm using mandrake linux 10.1 on ext3 fs)

You might try foremost. It's basically a forensics tool that lets you recover certain filetypes. You'll have to mount the drive on another machine or try to use a live CD. But I was able to recover my parents digital photo collection and all their word documents from a drive that got formatted by a virus in Windows.

If they're REALLY important, it's better to take the drive out of the machine and take it to an expert... The biggest thing is to not use the drive anymore until you recover the files because files aren't really deleted, just the address to the file is deleted. So the OS says "this is open space" and might accidentally overwrite the file (although this still might be recoverable).

Check this page. I haven't used it myself as I had some tools on my friend's windows PC. But, maybe u should give it a try.
http://e2undel.sourceforge.net/recovery-howto.html

EDIT: I am sorry. Perhaps it might not be helpful to you as I just read that it works only with ext2 filesystems.

Personally, I haven't recoved a single file using any tools available with linux. However, I have recoved partitions wish parted. I would recommend you to take your disc to some professional. Or if u don't have hatred for windows, there are tools available like RLinux which run on windows and can recover files from ext2/ext3 filesystems.