Anyway to recover wiped data? And why did kernel fail to load?

[Eric Yellin]

I recently installed FreeBSD 5.2. 
Something happened that cause all data on all partitions to be wiped. I'd like help on the following: 

1. What did I do wrong?
2. Is there a way to restore lost data

Here is what I did:
1. About 2 weeks ago I installed Release 5.2 from FTP + ports and many packages: apache, MySQL, Postfix, Webmin(SSL), Listserv and several others.
2. At some point FTP and SSH login started becoming very slow
3. I decided to reboot the system and it did not come up. Instead I got a message saying that the kernel was not loaded. I could not load it in anyway.
4. Searched the web for help on fixing this situation but could not find anyway to restore the kernel other than reinstalling.
5.I decided to reinstall the system assuming that data would be kept. 
6. Actually first I used the sysinstall option called Upgrade. When going into it, it took me at some point to the partition editor, there I noticed that all the partitions were of the correct size but had no mount point. after changing the mount point to the original names and quitting a message came on saying it was running fsck or something similar. The system seemed to be stuck but may have been doing something. After several minutes I decided to boot the system. Again, It may have been in the middle of a process... Could this have caused damage?
7. Went to sysinstall and installed the base package again. I once again had to define the mount points.
8. After finishing a successful installation I booted the system and FreeBSD came up with no problems. However all my data was gone... 

I was not too surprised that root, /var and /usr were wiped however I have a partition named /web that held the data and it also is empty. That seems strange to me. Nothing in the installation wrote to this partition.
I have a partial backup, however data is updated all the time and I seem to have lost lot's of data on /web

Any help will be deeply appreciated.

Thanks,

Eric