I had a dual boot desktop(windows and redhat).
The windows partition has been formatted(thorough format,no quick format). I need some data from the formatted windows partition. Is it possible now to recover the partition?Is there any trace left behind by the format operation? Or, at least, is there any way to detect that there was a windows partition on the disk?

There are quite a few open source utilities out there that could most likely help you out, *depending* on how well formatted the hard drive is. I don't know the M$ formatting specs or algorithms off hand, so I don't know if it will be easy, hard, etc. What really matters in this case though is how recent did you format the drive? Have you written any new data to the drive since the format? If not, or at a minimal amount, you should be able to recover at least some of your data.

Have a look at the following links, as they will contain information that will assist you in attempting to recover your data. Please note, that if the data has been written over enough of times, or there is any type of damage to the platter of the hard drive, that you will either be out of luck, or will have to shell out some money to a third-party for more intensive recovery options.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_o...overy_software
https://help.ubuntu.com/community/DataRecovery
https://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/File_Recovery

Me personally, I recommend try using testdisk/photorec first. I wish you good luck with getting your files back!

Cheers,

Josh

Thank you very much for the reply, Guru.