DataRecovery. Deleted or lost files can sometimes be recovered from failed or formatted drives and partitions, CD-ROMs and memory cards using the free/libre software available in the Ubuntu repositories.
The data is recoverable because the information is not immediately removed from the disk. Follow these steps to recover lost data. You should NOT write to the failed device, as it can worsen a hardware failure, and overwrite existant data in case of lost files . Shut down the affected machine as soon as possible, and restart it from a LiveCD or LiveUSB. Ubuntucat » Blog Archive » Recovering deleted files with a Ubuntu CD. Continued from Recovering Windows files with a Ubuntu CD II: getting your files Introduction Usually when you delete a file from your computer, the file is still there—its space, however, is marked as available for use.
Even if you reformat your hard drive and reinstall Windows (I had a friend who did this by accident, and I used Ubuntu to save her data), most of your data is probably still there. Need data recovery software.