Help! Panic! Accidentally initialized / partition!!!

[Mark Phillips <mark@ist.flinders.edu.au>]

My friend has (had) Debian installed on his laptop.  I got a call from him
this morning saying he can't boot his laptop anymore!  I'm over his place
now and after using the rescue disk to mount his / partition, I've
discovered all that is there is /lost+found and /root/dbootstrap_settings.

My friend admitted that he might have selected "Initialize a Linux
Partition" by mistake.  That seems to be what has happened.

Anyway, I am thinking that the only option is to reinstall debian from
scratch.  But if there is any way to reverse what he has done and get the
old stuff back I want to know about it!

I strongly suspect reinstallation is my ownly option.  Can people confirm
this?  I don't want to reinstall until I am sure there is no other option.

Thanks,

Mark.

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        "They told me I was gullible ... and I believed them!"