How to recover Lost data during Ubuntu Installation

[udayag]

Hi,

I installed Unbuntu (latest Version) yesterday. Unfortunately lost all the data during installation due to wrong selection. Earlier I had windows XP. Windows Xp was overwritten with Ubunut but at the same time lost all the data in hard disk. Can anybody suggest if I can recover the lost data and Possible ways to recover ?

Thanks,
Udaya

[Mark Phelps]

If you've installed Ubuntu OVER WinXP, anything you do to the Ubuntu install (such as installing data recovery apps), is going to worsen your chance of recovering the data.

You would need to be able to remove the drive, connect it to another PC, and do the data recovery from there.

If you can do that, you have a couple of choices:
1) Use Linux apps to do the recovery -- testdisk and photorec come to mind
2) Use Windows apps to do the recovery -- GetDataBack and Recovery My Files come to mind.

My own experience has been that the second option has had a lot better luck recovering Windows files and paritions than the first -- but those are not free. You can download trial versions from Runtime Software to see what they can find, but you have to buy them to do the actual data recovery.

[06bit002]

I suggest that you try to recover the GRUB of your OS..Well I am not very much aware about how that can be done but that is an option which proved to be successful when one of my acquaintances faced a similar situation...Try to learn about recovering the grub before you try the option mentioned in the first reply...

Regards,
06bit002.

[udayag]

I do not have an option to take out the hard disk. The one worked on is HP LAPTOP. Can u throw any other idea ??