Data Recovery

copz

I was installing Linux Mint on my laptop and I accidentally installed it on my external
hard drive instead of the computers drive talk about a stupid mistake well what I want
to know is there any software out there that can retrieve my data or is it gone forever.

Morpork

Try this first http://www.snapfiles.com/downloads/restoration/dlrestoration.html
It's free, but may not recover from a formatted drive very well.

Use http://www.recovermyfiles.com/ to see what is recoverable (you need to purchase to recover though).

phelixoflaherty

http://filehippo.com/download_recuva/

dyer

you might be able to recover some data with the above programs but in all likely hood youve probably overwritten alot of it with the operating system, especially if youve been booting into it and using it etc.

tommycahir

If the data is extremely valuable to you then you could contact these guy's as they are used by a number of large multinationals to recover data.. http://www.criticaldata.ie/

another software based option is http://www.piriform.com/recuva which i have used a number of times and it is so simple to use.

vibe666

i had a similar problem a couple of years ago when i accidentally wrote a bootable linux usb image to the wrong usb drive and overwrote my 1tb data disk.

pretty much every tool (free or otherwise) i could find was saying it could restore the data, but wanted a separate disk to restore to, rather than just fixing the problem on the drive i had, which wasn't possible as i didn't have a spare 1tb disk and couldn't afford to buy one at the time.

then, my very clever mate dave suggested a free tool called TestDisk which (after creating the required boot disk) was able to recreate the missing partition table on the drive in literally about 30 seconds, restoring it to its former glory with everything (except the bit that had been directly written over) back exactly as it had been before my unfortunate snafu, with the minimum amount of fuss.

it's a totally essential tool that no nerd should be without.

dyer

good call vibe666.. forgot about that little prog, saved me once before too.

demanufactured

Active partition recovery