Mac OS X 10.4 Attacked by XP Disk!!!

[tristanmarsh]

At home I had one Intel iMac from 2007 running Tiger , I was fiddling around trying to see what it would take to dual windows. I couldn’t find any straight XP installation disks, but I did find an EeePC XP support disk or something. When I viewed it’s files under OS X it appeared as if it didn’t actually install windows, but just copied a prebuilt image onto the drive.

Booting up from the disk began a loading procedure, something Asus had created specifically for the EeePC. After approximately five minutes of “RAMDISK” loading, a GUI Dialogue box popped. The two options were to install windows or reboot. I clicked install windows. A second window came up asking if I was sure. I semi freaked out and clicked no, realising there was no other option but reboot, I paused and then clicked install windows and confirm. Absolutely positive that there would be more options like partitioning or the installation location similar to the usual XP installation, I was sure no real changes would have been made at this stage.
As soon as I did say I was sure, the DVD drive kicked into action really loud action and I could see there was no more dialogue. Super completely freaking out, I held down the power button and it restarted 5 seconds later.

I go to reboot into OS X, no grey screen, no apple, no spinning wheel. A black DOS like screen flashing “Error loading operating system.” This wasn’t loading OS X but the less than 10 seconds of windows installed. The (EFI I think that’s it) doesn’t even recognise there was 320 GB of OS X there previously.

Now the HDD appears like this when I view it with disk utility from the OSX installation disks.
Partition 1: 298.06 GB, MS-DOD (FAT)
Partition 2: 31.38 MB, MS-DOS (FAT)

Whenever I have changed the format of drives or partitions it doesn’t take me 10 seconds to do so, so my guess is that the XP installation disk was just beginning the process of changing it. And I am super duper hoping that although it has been relabelled as FAT, the data is still sitting there intact.
There is about 20GB of documents I need, (did I mention it is my sisters computer) wedding pictures, travelling pictures, family pictures, university essays. All the stuff she is going to absolutely kill me for losing.
(She is away in the NT for a week or so, so I have a little time to attempt and recover it)

My idea is to boot from a Linux Live DVD and try to get the data somehow that way? Or maybe there is some deleted data recovery software to run in Linux. Or on it’s own boot DVD/CD??

Anyway, I DON’T KNOW  I need help and advice on what to do, or what I can do… It will probably take me a while to reply, because I had to go to MacDonald’s to upload this. This little EeePC won’t connect to the cable internet properly.

[djackmac]

Looks like the disk you were screwing around with was a restore cd for the Windows machine. Can't quite comprehend the mentality of doing something like this without at least a backup and then crying over losing all your data? I'd imagine Data Rescue II is ging to be your best bet.

[tristanmarsh]

That software does look handy indeed.

Can't quite comprehend the mentality of doing something like this without at least a backup and then crying over losing all your data?

I, am not sure... Why this is a question, but anyway;
1. I apologise for your lack of comprehension.
2. I cannot afford any kind of backup mediums.
3. There was no crying, nor the necessity to imply it

Yes, yes I am an idiot thank you.
I'm happy, I've learned quite a bit and you have been nice enough to help me out.

Now you can get a "thankyou!"
tmarsh10