Installed ubuntu on secondary drive and deleted all my data :S

What happened to the primary drive, that is, how did you erase it? If it has been written over, then you may have lost your data.

My primary drive was untouched,,,,, :S

My primary drive was untouched,,,,, :S

Then the data is still on the primary drive (albeit possibly deleted)?

yeah the files on primary .... but my secondary was my backup hdd :(

So why not just erase your backup and re-copy the files from the primary?

If you have erased you data you should stop using the drive immediately as you could risk further loss of data.

You could try booting an ubuntu live CD, and install testdisk (sudo apt-get install testdisk). Then run photorec (included with testdisk) to recover your data. See http://www.cgsecurity.org/wiki/PhotoRec for more info.

I fear I might have damaged the files even more.... of pure frustration I used active undelete ... but in order to use it on the drive I had to convert the drive into ntsc again ........

And the program didnt even find anything. >*

I am going to use this method and cross fingers because the images and my documents mean the world to me. games music and movies are not important

okey so I tried downloading testdisk (sudo apt/get/ install testdisk) but I am new with ubunto and have never tried installing with codes

Jogvan:

Are the original files from the primary drive deleted? I still am not sure of your situation -- I they are deleted, you do need to follow bcbc's instructions. If not, just copy the files somewhere safe!

The files on the primary drive were a fraction of what I had on the Secondary drive.

The secondary drive was where I had all my backup and it is the secondary drive that is deleted

To add insult to injury my windows on my primary hdd somehow got destroyed before I could even a new backup of the files (I'm going to put the hdd in another computer and take backup before I start repairing windows)

So I am having a horrible day

>The secondary drive was where I had all my backup and it is
> the secondary drive that is deleted
Apologies for being a bit of a jerk, but thats not really a backup, more a storage area. You should always ensure that there are two independant copies (eg on two different disks) of your data. Depending upon your needs, you may even want to keep the second disk in a different location.

You can try a low level program like foremost to recover the data, but once an area on the HDD is rewritten, your data is gone. When you delete a file, you mark it as "space that can be used for other purposes", so the data is there, but not deleted.

Installing ubuntu ont he second drive means that you have probably touched 5 or 6 gig worth of your secondary disk. I'd make an image of that disk wherever you can, and then try to recover from that backup.

hehe yeah I know ... Im not using the secondary drive..... its just for storage. 2 harddrives though

an image using what program ?

and is there a better recover program than active undelete ? because I believe that it is not doing deep scans thorough enough