Urgent help !!! wrongly mkfs to /dev/sda1 insted of /dev/sdb1 data deleted

[Jordon Bedwell]

On 6/6/2011 4:11 AM, Vinod Nadiadwala wrote:
> Hi, guys,
> I had a working Ubuntu 9.10 with Windows 7 installed, and i was writing
> an image of IPCOP (www.ipcop.org <http://www.ipcop.org/>) to the USB
> drive incorrectly, i did mkfs on my primary partation i.e. /dev/sda1
> 
> now i am trapped in situation, i was trying to write and usb-hdd image
> of ipcop on USB Drive, while doing so, i have given following commands
> 
> 1. mkfs.vfat /dev/sda1
> 2. e2label usb-pen
> 3. zcat filename > /dev/sda1
> 
> * now the stupid thing i have done, is given /sda1( My HDD ) instead of
> /sdb1 (USB Drive), it has successfully loaded IPCOP bootable on my
> primary drive, and my laptop is not working now.
> 
> Laptop Partation Info:
> /dev/sda1 - NTFS (Windows 7 Prof)
> /dev/sda2 - NTFS
> /dev/sda3 - EXT4 (Ubuntu 9.10)
> * i had dual booted Windows 7 with Ubuntu.
> 
> Current Partation Info:
> /dev/sda1 - vfat (IPCOPBOOT)
> And all other is free space - 320gb
> 
> ** now i want to get my partitions & data back, if anybody have idea
> about how to get rid of this situation please share.
> ** The good thing i have done, is that, i didn't tried to install
> anything on the drive after this happened, with hopes that i can get my
> data back
> *** So i guess that it can be recovered but confusion is that, which
> data recovery software to use, and for linux or windows, as i had my
> data on NTFS filesystem and currently there is Free Space and EXT4
> partition.

(1TB USB drives are pretty cheap now ~ about $60)

1.) Go find an extra drive that is bigger or as big.
2.) Next time validate what you are doing.
3.) Next time validate what you are doing.

Then try this:
https://help.ubuntu.com/community/DataRecovery

To be honest though, since it's a laptop, I am to assume it's just data
that can be easily replicated (I would hope) and it would just be easier
to reinstall everything than to try and recover.