Re-imaged 1&1 Server with an LVM ... definitions are gone but can I get them back?
 

I had to re-image a server at 1&1 that (stupidly...) I allowed to be left running with their vanilla "Plesk." It has a fairly large LVM disk, but of course after re-imaging all of the LV's are back at their tiny size.

What I would like to know is ... (presuming that they didn't throw away the PV too?) ... is that data still there? Is there a way to get to it?

(I'm not pulling my hair out or anything if it isn't, because this is a throw-away test server, but it would of course be nice if...)

P.S.: What little 1&1 says about this is here:
http://faq.1and1.com/dedicated_serve...in_help/7.html

Postscript: Notes left by the previous engineer are a bit sketchy, but there is an empty /opt mount-point directory here and, IIRC, what probably happened on this box is that a new LV was allocated, of some unknown-to-me size, instead of extending the original cramped file systems (which of course would be a destructive process). The existing LV's probably weren't ever re-defined.

Is it reasonable to allocate an LV and then to see if there magically happens to still be a filesystem there?

If you boot into their Rescue System can you use LVM tools to see if pvscan, vgscan and lvscan still see data residing on the disk? If that works maybe you can SCP testdisk over and run diagnosis with that too? BTW do you have a backup of /etc/lvm data?