What exactly does the Ubuntu partitioner do when it quick formats a disk?
 

I have a TrueCrypt encrypted disk that's been accidentally formatted during a Ubuntu install but I'm pretty sure that it was only a quick format. As quick formats basically just blank the file address location table and there were no files on there, what exactly would have been written to the disk?

The formats for most Linux file systems work by creating inodes at periodic intervals across the partitions. These inodes show the intervening blocks as being free space. What you call the file address location table is called the superblock in Linux. The superblock is also repeated at large periodic intervals to provide redundancy to be used to recover from a catastrophic failure. All together about 5% of the partition is overwritten with inodes and superblocks. The overwritten parts of the file system are dispersed fairly evenly throughout the partition.

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Steve Stites

Thanks, I couldn't find the proper name for it.

It's defaulted to creating 4 partitions (one NTFS, one an EXT3 root, a swap and a ext3 /home partition.) so obviously the partition table's been written to too.

How will this affect the odds of a partition recovery tool getting my data back (bearing in mind that - if I understand correctly - most of it is still there, but the partition table has been overwritten and superblocks and inodes have been placed at regular intervals over the surface?

The odds of being able to recover data with a partition recovery tool are slim. I suggest that no matter what operating system you use that you set up a decent backup and recovery system and forget about recovery tools that try to find the data somewhere in an overwritten disk.

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Steve Stites

My gut feeling tells me your chances are about zero, given it was an entirely encrypted disk (not just an encrypted file stored on a normal filesystem/partition that was reformatted).

You might try asking your question on the TrueCrypt forums. http://forums.truecrypt.org/

Good luck!