Recover data from previous partition?

[learning_]

So I installed jaunty overtop an old jaunty install on an older computer just to have a basic computer for a friend of mine to use. Well it turns out there was important information that I need to retrieve from the previous install, yet I do not have any of the proper tools required to get at such data. Couldn't find anything about it in the forums but if it is there and I overlooked it, please feel free to direct me to the proper post.

[oldfred]

Once you overwrote it there may not be much to recover. Writes are somewhat random onto drive.

But I have used photorec to recover totally lost data. It scans drive for anything that looks like a file by type. You do not recover file names. I had saved a lot of text files many times. It found all the old versions, so I never knew if I found the last saved, but with older backup and lots of grepping & comparing files got most of my data back. Very long process, both the scan & file comparing.

https://help.ubuntu.com/community/DataRecovery

Testdisk & photorec
http://www.cgsecurity.org/wiki/PhotoRec
http://www.psychocats.net/ubuntucat/...rdeletedfiles/
http://ubuntu4beginners.blogspot.com...otorec-in.html

Use scripts to help sort and rename files:
http://www.cgsecurity.org/wiki/After_Using_PhotoRec
use flac tags to rename files
http://lglinux.blogspot.com/2008/10/...ame-files.html
http://system-tricks.com/index.php/d...overy-results/
Best GUI Indexing/Search Tool for Local Files?
http://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?t=1739701