I'm facing a strange issue, I will try to give as much details as I can. I already tried lot of things from stackexchange and ubuntuforum and nothing seem to work.My HDD looked like this : /dev/sda5 : empty partition (~90GB)/dev/sda3 : Linux Mint 17.2 (~60GB)/dev/sda4 : Linux Swap      (4GB)I needed to install Win7 for my work so I did on /dev/sda5, I knew that the MBR will be erased but I already did it in the past and I kept my Live USB to reinstall GRUB.First StepI installed Win7, reinstalled GRUB then I reboot and here start all my problems. Mint is not showing up as intended. So I boot again from my Live USB, I tried to mount Mint partition and it's empty, nothing is shown. Second stepI removed Win7 and try to install a fresh Mint on /dev/sda5 to check if it can fix things by itself but no luck. Third StepI wandered from post to post on stackexchange & ubuntuforum. I tried lot of things to check superblock, partition integrity : no problem ever found.Is the partition really empty ?So I was left with an empty partition with all my data. I was sure that all was still here laying on the disk. I found the foremost package and used it on an image of /dev/sda3. I was able to recover some files (so i am sure all is still here) but it is very messy and there is important stuff I did not found back.If someone know what could happened or how to get my data back I will anwser all your questions.Thanks ! Some random facts :Most of the files I am willing to get back are : txt / pdf / tex /php /python files. Foremost does not seem to find themI never touch the partition /dev/sda3 except to create an image with gddrescueWhen I tried to mount (even before messing up) Mint partition from Live USB (Kali & Mint) the disk was always empty (even if I can see that around 3GB are used in GParted)I am posting from the fresh Mint install and I can run whatever command is needed and install any package requiredEdit :Result of parted -l :Model: ATA ST9160821AS (scsi)Disk /dev/sda: 160GBSector size (logical/physical): 512B/512BPartition Table: msdosNumber  Start   End     Size    Type      File system     Flags 1      1048kB  90,0GB  90,0GB  extended                  boot 5      1049kB  90,0GB  90,0GB  logical   ext4 3      90,0GB  156GB   65,7GB  primary   ext4 4      156GB   160GB   4294MB  primary   linux-swap(v1)
Data recovery from corrupted Mint 17 partition
linux;linux mint;partition;data recovery