On Tue, Feb 1, 2011 at 9:32 AM, Jason Hsu <jhsu802701 at jasonhsu.com> wrote: > I have a client with a 500 GB hard drive that originally had an NTFS partition for about the first 370 GB and a Linux partition for the rest. He tried to install Ubuntu on the Linux partition. But for some reason, the installer reformatted the entire drive as ext4. He then reformatted the first 370 GB or so as NTFS to get the original formatting back so he could recover the Windows files from the original partition. However, the original Windows files did not appear, and Iolo Search and Recover couldn't find the files either. This may be beyond software recovery. If the file system has been written over twice (ext4 format and NTFS format) there's a good chance that software won't see any bits (they're still there in the form of a magnetic "shadow" but you'll never find that with software alone). The best tool I've ever used for NTFS file recovery is Ontrack Easyrecovery Pro. You can download the free version and it will perform a full scan. Of course if it finds the files you have to feed it money, at which time your client asks "how much is that data worth?" For future reference, if you or your clients or anyone on this list ever does something destructive to a drive (like accidentally formatting the wrong partition), STOP IMMEDIATELY. Shut off the computer and uncable the drive before continuing. If you only made one mis-step (whacking the partition table, reformatting the worng partition, etc) there is a better than 50/50 chance that the data is recoverable by software. Not all the bits get touched usually which means data exists in some form. It's usually that SECOND step (in this case, repartitioning and reformatting) that causes the write(s) that kill the data. It is for this reason that the data is likely beyond the capabilities of software. Your client needs to have his credit card ready in any case :-) Best of luck to you! Brian