Recently my wife got several files accidentally removed, from ext3 storage.
I tried several different programs, including FS debuggers, but mostly unsuccessful,
as ext3 is rather aggressively erasing data to protect on-storage integrity.
Finally I found Foremost - program written by two FBI special agents (no kidding), which could work on raw partitions
and recover files, based on knowledge of the file structure.
And this command:
foremost -dv -s 100 -t doc -i /dev/hda1 definitively saved my day.