[CentOS] Need a Centos 6 USB hard drive recovery procedure

Fri May 10 00:56:15 UTC 2013
Rock <Rocksockdoc at gmail.com>

On Thu, 09 May 2013 16:51:48 -0400, m.roth-x6lchVBUigD1P9xLtpHBDw wrote:

> Are you sure that the FAT was mangled, and not just the MBR?

How can I tell?

All I know is the following:
a) The WinXP PC had a virus or something making it slow
b) So I decided to re-install the WinXP OS
c) I connected the 150GB USB drive to the WinXP PC
d) I backed up all the data files onto the 150GB USB drive
e) I disconnected the 150GB USB drive 
f) I repartitioned & re-installed Windows XP on the PC
g) Then I plugged the backup 150GB USB drive back in

It gave a message that it was unrecognized or corrupted.
So I googled, & found a Microsoft Support page saying to run:
 chkdsk /F E:
So I ran that, and now the USB drive was recognized.
But it "appeared" empty.

So I asked how to recover and people said use "Recuva".
So I installed Recuva 24 hours ago; it's still running,
on the hard disk drive:
 http://www1.picturepush.com/photo/a/12893214/img/12893214.jpg

In fact, even though it has said there were only 10 minutes 
to go for the past 20 hours or so, the file count keeps 
climbing. 
 http://www1.picturepush.com/photo/a/12893269/img/12893269.jpeg

The problem is that, even though Recuva lists the hierarchy 
where the files are coming from, it is putting all 70,000
files in the same directory!

Given that information, which is really all that I know,
what would you recommend for file recovery if I plug the
USB drive into my Centos 6 laptop?