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Mistakenly formatted whole drive while replacing Window 7
I was using win 7 on my dell inspiron N5110 having 500 GB HDD and 2 GB RAM, with derive C was having 50GB to100GB space(can't remember exactly) & having OS in it. Other's Derive/Partition were D and E. Then i thought to replace my Windows 7 by ubuntu and as a fresher for linux environment i goes with "Erase Disk and install ubuntu" without thinking even a single time that it will not only erase C partition but the whole derive. And when i continued the installation , even after 8 hours it was not completed and i suspect something went wrong and force shut down my laptop by pressing power button. Then i checked my derive partition table with the help of Window 7 DVD and was afraid to see there was only one partition of 463Gb(~500GB) with "0" being shown under "Free Space Available" column. Later on i came to know that ubuntu formatted my whole Hard-disk and installed some of the installation file in following unsuccessful installation attempt. Now my questions are:
1. Even if ubuntu get partially installed in my Hard derive , it must get installed in the somewhat same Hard derives sector/track which had initially occupied by C partition when i was using Win 7.
2. So the chances are very less that it have over written anything beyond old derive C.
3. Let me correct if i am wrong, if i have three partition of my HDD (C,D & E) and having XYZ operating system installed in partition C then if i format the whole HDD and merge all partition resulting into one single partition and then installed an ABC operating system on the same HDD without making any partition. In this situation provided post installation size of both operating system are exactly or approximately Same, does the new OS's files will get overwritten over the same sectors/tracks of HDD which were initially occupied by ABC(old) operating system's files or the new OS will get overwritten entirely on different HDD's tracks/sectors in respect to tracks/sectors which were occupied by old OS.
I am asking just to clear my worries about mistakenly overwriting anything on old D and E partitions while installing a fresh window 7 copy(just meant to run the recovery software) and then install the recovery software and recover my data from those sectors of HDD which were initially occupied by Partition D and E. Because i have to recover files only from hard drives tracks/sectors occupied by partition D and E , not from C partition.
A Big Thank you for your time , as i am in big trouble.
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