help! dd wiped out source partition

[hawk@smith.ansci.iastate.edu (Richard E. Hawkins Esq.)]

Augh!!!!  This one is *really* bad

Several months ago, when i repartitioned, I fooollishly left half the
disk after the last partition.

Today, I printed out the partition table from fdisk, deleted the 
extended partion, placed a new one, and reentered the locations
of the logical partitions.

I then made a partition the same size as /home at the very end of
the disk, and used dd to copy the old partition to the new.

After 40 minutes, it was done, and now I get a denial that the old one
is even an e2fs in the first place.  

of course, the easily replacable (and to be replaced) root partition 
survived this treatment . . .

findsuper reveals,