Something to be proud of! :)

The day started as most days do in the last few months, wake up, think about thesis, get up, have breakfast thinking about thesis. Sit at desk, and work on thesis... then dad called me to help him with his windows reinstallation as there were some things not working properly....hmmmm....easy....
It was a 3 partition drive (1. for the OS; 2. for data; 3. for more data). Dad wanted me to wipe the first partition, do whatever it took to get the sound card working....
Anyway, so this is were the story gets long because I misunderstood, and thought I had complete reign of the whole computer....so I, deleted all partitions:

1. Formatted from an ntfs (a 3 partition drive) to linux and installed fedora (to check if the hardware was okay under a different OS - it was)
2. Formatted the linux single partition into 3 sections, and installed windows....

Then, realised (with dad's help and shock/horror expression) that there was precious data on partition 2 and 3 of the original drive....

OH MY GOODNESS! I can't even begin to re-live the sinking feeling and cold sweat you succumb to when you realise you deleted someone else's data (I wouldn't have felt so bad about my data - I have had a few experiences of this myself, and it doesn't feel nearly as bad).

Anyway, after two days of agony and pouring over the internet, learning about NTFS/ext3 and keeping positive (the thought that the military shoots holes through their drives to completely render their data deleted)....it's over, everything is safe and sound, and I am expert at hdd recovery! :) I even managed to recover the mounting point (and mount it) for the third partition!

The software that saved the day and that I highly recommend (after trying at least three others) is: Active@ UNDELETE 7 Professional. It is simple, elegant and best of all works! It's embarrassingly easy to use, and basically all that I learned in the two days of 'recovery mode' I didn't need if I had found that software right at the start.