Hi,
I had a problem of lossing my data due to my own mistake. But the data what I lost is very important to me and so I am here expecting any one will help me out to solve my problem. This is a description of the problem.

I have two hard disks.IDE Primary Master is 40 gb, Secondary Master is 60 gb. On my first hard disk I have Windows 98. On the Secondary Master I had Red Hat Linux 8.0 /home partion of which was containing a lot of data.
Then I tried to install Mandrake 9.1 on the second hard disk thinking that
I have already taken a bavkup. I go on installing Mandrake on the second hard disk, repartioning and reformatting the previous partions. After installation I got that I have done a blunder since there was no backup taken On that hard disk.

Now I started searching internet for the recovery but most of the softwares i got which claims to recover data from this condition can do that only for Windows; I got a software called RTl.. for doing that thing in Linux but it supports only ext2 filesystem whereas I had ext3 . I found another software for linux and ext3 too but that is a commercial one.

I belive there must be some way out or some free software available to fix this and get my data back.

And I am here posting this to you hoping you will extend your kind help to
get my data back, in the reply mail.

thanks in advance to any help .

It is important how you repartitioned. What is where /home was? Was the area written or not? If your data is overwritten, only aspecialist (with special ahrdware) can help you. If the old /home partition is now in empty space, you should be able to get the data (probably even by just mounting the partition with the right offset).

It's hard to say without knowing your current and previous partitioning scheme. Please post it.

Happens so often .... either weird installation .... being stupid or Windo$ .

I´d say try testdisk ( cgsecurity.org ) .... it found my reiser partition without any problems but I still don´t know how to add it to the / filesystem .

And of course just search LQ.org for " recover ext3 " or so & U should be able to find tons .

Da Wini G.

I am so thankful for your suggestyons. Let me try the things and I am definitely going to get back to you informing the result.

Thanks again.