[deanhills]

Its a pretty common mistake when you are installing linux for the very first time .

Haha .... I'm not sure it's a common mistake - like people usually do their research first as they'd be scared to lose their data, but at least the silver lining is that one now has a project to find a way to recover the lost data.  So thanks for your suggestion.  I'd have loved to try this out.  Hopefully @Rehan will try your suggestion so we can find out whether it works.    

I found the following review of the software at TechRadar - as well as a list of alternative software.  Nice to know it's free.  Completely curious to know how good/difficult it is to use. I've already learned something. That the data is still there, but you have to find it - so the tools are there to find and recover the data bit by bit.
https://www.techradar.com/reviews/testdisk-and-photorec

BTW here is a discussion by someone who was experimenting with loading Linux the first time that shows care and good sense:
https://www.cnet.com/forums/discussions/...irtualbox/