How a youtube video and a very dumb mistake just bricked my computer:

I was reading about how to mount a flash drive, and I found a video on youtube that said to do this:

Then I erased the contents of the drive (whitch had contents that had things that looked like linuz and grub in them, but I thought that that was from something I might have been doing before, and I erased the drive to start putting stuff on it), and went on to doing something else. then the computer froze (the mouse cursor didn't even move), and the keyboard LEDs were flashing, when I reset the computer, I realized what I had just done - erased the Linux kernel and GRUB!!!!!

I am now thinking that the system folders were in different partitions without me even knowing it.

I had backed up a week or two ago, but I had my .fvwm2rc that I had been working on for days, and maybe some other stuff that is now lost.

In an attempt to recover my data, I took the hard drive out of another computer with Windows 7 RC installed, put it in my computer, and booted from it, only to remember that Windows can't read ext4.

At lest I was getting a bit interested in Debian a few days ago, I guess that this would be a good time to try it. I started downloading it now, and will let it finish overnight.

Yup, this is a lesson best learned rarely! Blindly following the instructions given is always a recipe for disaster, especially in Linux and any variant of Unix, since the OS is designed to be used by people who know what they are doing! I'm sorry to here that you have lost what you had.

At least I have the programs I wrote and my photos backed up. Looks like I will have to start over my .fvwm2rc once debian is downloaded and installed.

Kind of going out on a limb here but by describing linux and grub, does this mean sda1 was a dedicated boot partition on your hard drive? I haven't ever done anything quite like that and don't know how Fedora works but, if it was me and Slack, I'd just try to boot with my installation disk and see about reinstalling my kernel and loader. Either way, if your home partition was separate and wasn't wiped, you should be able to recover your fvwm config and everything else. (I think I'd have a stroke if I lost mine.)

But if I'm misunderstanding and you wiped everything, that really sucks. Hopefully that will be a lesson you only learn once and, while Fedora's not to blame, maybe you'll end up liking Debian better.

Yeah, all you need to do is reinstall the kernel and grub too (if that's what you're using). You can probably use a live CD or rescue CD or something.

I did not wipe the hard drive, I just erased GRUB and the Linux kernel. I already downloaded Debian and I am about to burn the DVD, and I was thinking about trying a live CD to get some data back, but I am not sure how to do that.

And I guess that Fedora did install a seperate boot partition without my knowledge of it, I can't imagine how else this would happen.

I got Debian installed!

I chose to install it without any DE, WM or X window system. It booted fine onto a command line, in which I installed X and FVWM, and now it works good. Now I just wonder how to get the Nvidia driver and Xinerama for my dual monitors, not to mention .fvwm2rc.