Recover session after snapshot

[kiri]

Hello

I'm using Ubuntu on Virtualbox, and I recently made a very bad mistake. I took a snapshot 4 months ago and I didn't know what it was. I did only this snapshot.
Today I tried to restart my session and instead of that I clicked on "restore snapshot 1"... When I restarted, the Virtual Box was like 4 months ago, I lost all my data...
What can I do to retrieve something from these 4 months?

Sorry for my poor english and thanks in advance.

[socratis]

What can I do to retrieve something from these 4 months?

Restore from a backup. That's the only way.
If you do not have a backup, your data is gone for good.

[kiri]

Thank you for your answer. I don't have a back-up...

What if I delete this snapshot? What will happen?

After some research I found on a forum someone talking about VMWare's VMware-mount. Can't it restore my VM as it was yesterday?
Moreover, I read that when the snapshot is restored, VirtualBox appears to copy over the current image file with the snapshot file.
So, if the snapshot is much smaller than the previous "current state," my data should still be available to recovery programs no?

[mpack]

It sounds like you told the system to delete the last 4 months.

It sounds like you have no backup made in at least the least 4 months.

If so then no, there is no magic cure for this problem. The data is gone.

[socratis]

VirtualBox appears to copy over the current image file with the snapshot file.

No, it doesn't.

Can't it restore my VM as it was yesterday?

No. What you're talking about is "hocus pocus", magic.

my data should still be available to recovery programs no?

That's the main reason I wanted to reply, even though mpack pretty much covered it. Even if you were able to see your snapshot, a snapshot does *not* contain differences in your files, so that you could recover some of them. A snapshot contains differences in the hard drive sectors. And most of the times a file can be on different sectors, not all of the sectors modified. A "file recovery" program wouldn't be able to tell which data belongs to which file. Another big "no way".

I don't have a back-up...

You should next time. I hope this at least ends with a "lesson learned"...