Recover data from hard drive with partitions (but not most data) overwritten

You can use PhotoRec in this situation. It's a free application that scans your harddrive for file headers and tries to recover as many files possible. I've had luck restoring documents and photos from harddrives where the partition table got messed up and other file recovery apps failed.

"i recommend WinHex, certainly one of the best program available in the realm of computer forensics (if not THE best). if it's just 'file recovery' you need, the 'lite' version, called Davory, will suffice, it is using the same technology. both programs are able to recover data from formatted drives, even if partially overwritten. the personal license for Davory costs €33 or $48.

just make sure to select the physical disc and not any of the newly created partitions from the drive selection menu.

Winhex saved my bacon countless times!"

"The easiest thing would be to use a software tool to recover the files. I've used Active@ Partition Recovery and Restorer 2000.

A nice thing about the data recovery tools like these is that you can try them to see what the software finds before buying them.

If you absolutely know how the disk was previously partitioned, for example because you made a disk image of it a couple years ago, you may be able to use a Linux live CD to boot the system and then use fdisk to rewrite the partition table. With the parition table restored, other data recovery tools may work better."