My computer got wiped accidentally due to a fresh Ubuntu installation.
Since the drive contains very important data and codes, it would be really great if the same could be recovered.
It is a 2TB hard drive which had Ubuntu 10.10 earlier. It now has a Ubuntu 12.04 installed on it (which I understand occupies ~4GB). The machine has been powered off since.
The installation was done using a usb with the option where the previous ubuntu installation is removed.
Since installation doesn't take a lot of time, I'm inclined to think that the disk wasn't completely formatted and that most of the data is still there.
I have no experience with recovery and hence a detailed explanation is very helpful.
NOTE: I can arrange an additional 2TB hard disk for copying data. My computer has a fast internet connection and I have other computers connected to the network which I may use to access the previous one as well.
Best Answer
Exactly the same thing happened to me. I managed to recover all my data with testdisk.
In my case I had 2 partitions - the Ubuntu install formatted my drive and deleted my second partition with all my data. I simply re-enabled the partition (I think I set it from deleted to logical..) and I could access everything from Ubuntu again. It was also possible to copy the files from within testdisk to another drive/partition.
Good luck!