[NTLUG:Discuss] Data recovery

[Robert Thompson]

Hello,

I was installing a new distribution and backed up the files I wanted to keep on a backup harddrive. I wiped out the main drive to install the new system on. After installing, I went to mount the backup drive and found that the partition table had been wiped out. If I fdisk the drive and print the partitions, nothing is listed. I did a dd on part of the device and strings'ed it, and found that my files were copied, but somehow the partitions are hosed so I can't mount the drive. There are binary files that I would like to recover, so just extracting the data with strings won't work. How would I go about recovering the files on the harddrive? It's not important enough to pay a company for backup recovery, but I'd like to get the data if it's possible. The backup drive is 40G and I have a spare 120G installed. The files backed up don't use the whole 40G.

Thanks,

=-= Robert T.