[Tfug] Data recovery learning opportunity

[Paul Scott]

The first 500 blocks of my formerly working Debian woody/sid system were 
just zapped!  I made the mistake of leaving the woody install CD in the 
drive and while I was gone someone tried to start my computer and went 
right by the warning screen and initialized the Linux partition.  Yes, I 
had everything in one partition.  The system I am now building will have 
several partitions

I'll pause while you laugh.

I have copied the whole partition to another one on my new 40GB hard 
drive with:
dd if=/dev/hdb2 of=/dev/hda6

Would that have given me a good working copy?  It seems to be Ok.

I have found debugfs, lde and the Undeletion mini-HOWTO.  I am off to 
get a book with an accurate description of ext2 and possibly more tools..

Does anyone know of any better tools?  There are some files which I need 
to recover.  I will write my own program if I don't find anything easier.

TIA,

Paul Scott