How to revover using Data Recovery software n Linux (ubuntu 12.10 and older version)

 Recover data in Linux platform

The other day a friend of mine wiped out his harddisk,while "ATTEMPTING" to dual boot his machine with Suse Enterprise 11,he almost cried his heart out.we had quite a tweaky weekend that turned out to be a fun afterall.we recovered 99.99999% of the data....!!
Thanks to debian.

Our tools included:
A debian Live cd.
Internet or optionally the Testdisk package.
Frugal
Scalpel
the instructions are quite simple....

Run Testdisk as root
vinay:~#sudo testdisk

Recovering your files,the fun part
PhotoRec
Of the three tools we’ll show, PhotoRec is the most user-friendly, despite being a console-based utility. To start recovering files, open a terminal (Applications > Accessories > Terminal) and type in

vinay~#sudo photorec

Scalpel
Scalpel is a powerful program that, like Foremost, is heavily configurable. Unlike Foremost, Scalpel requires you to edit a configuration file before attempting any data recovery.
Any text editor will do, but we’ll use gedit to change the configuration file. In a terminal window (Applications > Accessories > Terminal), type in:

sudo gedit /etc/scalpel/scalpel.conf

scalpel.conf contains information about a number of different file types. Scroll through this file and uncomment lines that start with a file type that you want to recover (i.e. remove the “#” character at the start of those lines).
Save the file and close it. Return to the terminal window.
Scalpel also has a ton of command-line options that can help you search quickly and effectively; however, we’ll just define the input device (/dev/sda) and the output folder (a folder called “scalpel” that we created on the desktop).
Our invocation is:

sudo scalpel /dev/sda –o scalpel

These tools are lifesavers when something goes wrong with your hard drive. If your data is on the hard drive somewhere, then one of these tools will track it down!

How to rar/unrar the files on Linux operating system using open command terminal

Using rarlinux
download rarlinux tool from win-rar website and Gunzip the downloaded rarlinux-3.7.1.tar.gzip file
[root@vinsun]#gunzip rarlinux-3.7.1.tar.gzip
To extract the gunzipped but .tar file
[root@vinsun]#tar xvf rarlinux-3.7.1.tar
The above will extract the tar file to a folder in your present working directory called rar.
enter tho the rar dir
[root@vinsun]# cd ./rar
long list the rar folder -
[root@vinsun]# ls -l ./rar
You should see an executable file called unrar. There you go -
To unrar a file -
[root@vinsun]# ./unrar x file.rar
To extract a password protected rar file -
[root@vinsun]#./unrar x -p[password] file.rar


Using unrar:
Fetch and install unrar tools from fedora extra repository -
[root@cafe moon]#yum install unrar
To see unrar help pages-
[root@cafe moon]# unrar ?
To extract a rar file -
[root@cafe moon]# unrar x file.rar
To extract a password protected rar file -
[root@cafe moon]#unrar x -p[password] file.rar

Using rarlinux:
Download the rarlinux tool from Winrar website and Gunzip the downloaded rarlinux-3.7.1.tar.gzip file
[root@cafe moon]#gunzip rarlinux-3.7.1.tar.gzip
To extract the gunzipped but .tar file
[root@cafe moon]#tar xvf rarlinux-3.7.1.tar
The above will extract the tar file to a folder in your present working directory called rar.
enter tho the rar dir
[root@cafe moon]# cd ./rar
long list the rar folder -
[root@cafe moon]# ls -l ./rar
You should see an executable file called unrar. There you go -
To unrar a file -
[root@cafe moon]# ./unrar x file.rar
To extract a password protected rar file -
[root@cafe moon]#./unrar x -p[password] file.rar