Data may be lost due to hardware or software failures; data recovery is the process of restoring the lost data.
16
votes
4answers
12k views
Recovering ext4 superblocks
Recently, my external hard drive enclosure failed (the hard drive itself powers up in another enclosure). However, as a result, it appears its EXT4 file system is corrupt.
The drive has a single ...
14
votes
2answers
635 views
.bashrc overwritten but still sourced — how can it be recovered?
Usually when I find a command I want to alias, I echo it to my .bashrc like so:
[up button pressed to last command, then line edited so that it reads]
$echo "command-i-just-did" >> ~/.bashrc
...
13
votes
2answers
21k views
How to recover a crashed Linux md RAID5 array?
Some time ago I had a RAID5 system at home. One of the 4 disks failed but after removing and putting it back it seemed to be OK so I started a resync. When it finished I realized, to my horror, that 3 ...
13
votes
3answers
265 views
Securely delete files on btrfs filesystem
Sometimes, there's the need to delete a file in a filesystem, and make sure that the file is truly gone. A file that contains sensitive passwords, for example, should be throughly wiped from the disk.
...
10
votes
4answers
3k views
Recovering deleted files on fedora
I accidentally deleted a file from my laptop. I'm using Fedora. Is it possible to recover the file?
8
votes
2answers
480 views
saving data from a failing drive
An external 3½" HDD seems to be in danger of failing — it's making ticking sounds when idle.
I've acquired a replacement drive, and want to know the best strategy to get the data off of the dubious ...
8
votes
3answers
727 views
File is mysteriously empty. Options to recover?
I have seen several posts about recovering deleted files, but this situation is different. My wife had a file called Journal.odt in which she kept a lot of important personal information such as ...
8
votes
2answers
870 views
How to repair an ext3 partition after broken resize operation?
I was using gparted to resize a near-terabyte ext3 partition, adding about 40 GB to the left. After nearly 12 hours of moving data (and with 23 more hours estimated to remain) the system hung. Now ...
7
votes
3answers
245 views
What filesystem offers best protection for securing data against corruption due to power loss?
I am running a small uClibc and busybox based embedded system on an x86 device. I am using an initramfs but I also mounting a custom ext3 directory on a compact flash device in IDE mode that I am ...
7
votes
2answers
1k views
File damaged/lost during transfer? Recovery possible?
I was at uni a few days ago when I attempted to cut and paste a 500Mb file (a 3gp video recording) into my H drive on one of the uni network's Linux (Debian KDE 3.5) computers.
I did not see any ...
7
votes
3answers
402 views
Best file system for removable media
Recently I had a SD card destroyed ( software wise ) on me.
Basically as well as I can figure it out, all the metadata was wiped (ext4 card).
This happened when I was working and suddenly had to write ...
6
votes
1answer
472 views
How are files laid out in ext2/ext3/ext4?
A few days ago all my metadata on a ext4 format flash card was overwritten.
I am now going to speculate on how this happened. This is pure speculation. It happened just after I used a different ...
6
votes
1answer
1k views
Advanced NTFS partition file recovery techniques for damaged drives (IO errors)?
I've recently suffered a maddeningly small but quite important amount of damage to a hard drive on a ESXi host affecting a couple VMs. There's a file that I would very much like to recover, and of ...
5
votes
2answers
375 views
Overwrote Windows with Linux, how can I recover data?
While installing Ubuntu 11.10 (ext4) I accidentally chose a wrong partition and it overwrote my Windows 2003 installation (ntfs). How can I recover files?
So far I tried photoRec and it recovered ...
5
votes
2answers
1k views
Accidentally deleted the partitions on my boot disk. The system is still running. How can I recover?
I just accidentally scrubbed all the partitions from the wrong disk.
/dev/sda is the boot disk, and /dev/sdb is a new disk I am trying to set up as a RAID mirror.
I accidentally fat-fingered it, ...
5
votes
2answers
255 views
Recover deleted file that is currently being written to
I started downloading a big file and accidently deleted it a while ago. I know how to get its current contents by cping /proc/<pid>/fd/<fd> but since the download is still in progress ...
5
votes
1answer
92 views
How to recover broken/partially deleted git repository
I accidently ran an rm -r on my .git directory. Luckly rm stopped when it got to a write-protected file, but I've still lost several things in my .git.
Files I still have:
FETCH_HEAD
ORIG_HEAD
...
5
votes
1answer
1k views
How to check/test .tar.bz archives?
I've been using tar with its "--use-compress-prog=pbzip2" function to archive my files then compress them with pbzip2 to get an "*.tar.bz" archive.
Afterwards I checked the resulting file with ...
4
votes
4answers
844 views
How to recover a file just deleted [duplicate]
I just deleted a file in Nautilus with Shift+Delete, which warned me that "If you delete an item, it will be permanently lost." I wonder if there is no way to recover the file?
My OS is Ubuntu 10.10. ...
4
votes
3answers
442 views
How to mount/recover data on a disk that was part of a mdadm raid 1 on another machine?
Some background
The disk itself was "worked on" by a friend and is said to be still intact, undamaged and still mountable/recoverable
The disk was part of a software raid 1 on Ubuntu 12.04
The other ...
4
votes
6answers
646 views
I accidentally removed /var/www/ on my Linux server
I ran rm -drf on my web server and accidentally removed everything inside /var/www/.
Of course, it had everything for our website in it. How can I undo this? Or is it possible to restore it to a ...
4
votes
1answer
437 views
Restoring an open file
I have an interesting problem which may or may not have a solution but I'd love to have one if possible:
On Solaris an open log file has been removed, which still continues to be populated while the ...
4
votes
1answer
956 views
Does LVM increase the risk of data loss?
Let's say I have two identical disks, and I set one LVM logical volume on them (no mirroring). Question: What will happen when one of the disks fails?
I will lose all the data from all the disks
I ...
4
votes
1answer
334 views
recovering deleted file held open by apache?
suppose an apache log file gets deleted but its held open by apache then this is what i am doing.
pid=$(lsof | grep text.txt | awk '/deleted/ {print $2}')
fd=$(lsof | grep text.txt | awk '/deleted/ ...
4
votes
3answers
6k views
How to salvage an unreadable usb flash drive
I have a 16GB USB flash drive that somehow got corrupted to the point in which even fdisk -l can't find it (I get a one-line error message saying: "Unable to open /dev/sdc")
However, it is being ...
4
votes
2answers
331 views
Recovering an ext4 filesystem with corrupt journal
I have a hard drive that seems to have developed some kind of hardware problem in the journal. This prevents the drive from being loaded. Running mount -r -t ext4 /dev/sda5 /mnt/root results in the ...
4
votes
4answers
819 views
Recovering overwritten LVM metadata
Yesterday I was trying using the Debian install in rescue mode in order to fix my Grub (The menu-item for Debian was suddenly gone).
Now I wasn't able to fix it and didn't have a lot of time, so I ...
4
votes
1answer
981 views
Recover a reiserfs hard disk
I'm unable to mount my 300GB external (in external enclosure) HDD's single partition. None of the fsck tools add anything, they cannot even recognize the partition. I had forgotten whether I had used ...
4
votes
1answer
547 views
How to decrypt single EncFS encrypted files?
Is it possible to decrypt single EncFS encrypted files with access to .encfs6.xml configuration file and without the proper directory structure it was created?
With a little help from google I found ...
4
votes
1answer
2k views
Recovering NTFS drive with safecopy
Several days ago, I dropped my USB external hard disk. As a result, I cannot read some of the files. I would like to recover it, and now I am using safecopy. I used the following command,
sudo ...
4
votes
2answers
636 views
How to recover my directory structure and files within from a messed-up partition
Something strange (don't ask) happened on my external hard-drive, resulting in (important) data unreachable... I am failing to mount it. That data was sitting on a vfat filesystem.
I can get much of ...
3
votes
4answers
8k views
How to recover data from a bad SD card?
I have a 4GB SD card with some family pictures on it that I need to recover. When I insert the card into my card reader, it shows up as an unknown 32MB device (as /dev/sde) and cannot be mounted. When ...
3
votes
3answers
339 views
Rolling back a file
I have a situation, a colleage of mine overwrote PHP files that I've made changes to , is it possible to roll back a file to a previous working version using the command line. No svn repositories are ...
3
votes
1answer
925 views
What is the fastest way to write all sectors on a drive?
The goal in my case is not to securely erase data, but simply to force sector reallocation by the drives firmware.
I have a drive that has had a few file corruptions. It seems to be due to getting ...
3
votes
1answer
157 views
Commands to access a SATA drive
I've damaged the drive I had in my Windows laptop and now I want to try to recover as many files as possible. I know very little about Linux though.
I have Ubuntu 10.04 on another machine. I have a ...
3
votes
4answers
1k views
Recover files from corrupt DVD
I have a DVD+RW containing a lot of images and videos. Multiple DVD drives fail to read or mount it. I tried to follow this to try and recover the files using DVDisaster, and have created an iso file. ...
3
votes
2answers
489 views
undelete files from local fileserver
I have a NAS (mybook world white light) in my living room where all my music and stuff is stored. I've mounted the music folder of the nas in the local music folder of my home directory on my desktop ...
3
votes
2answers
950 views
How to recover saved (stored) emails after damage to KMail configuration?
Recently my computer had to be hard-reset, and fsck ran on /home filesystem, producing lots of errors (old HDD drive).
After reset I don't see all my saved emails in KMail (KDE 3.5.3), at least those ...
3
votes
1answer
282 views
Linux equivalent of GraphClick?
Is there a piece of Linux software that does what GraphClick does in Mac OS X?
That is, is there a Linux software that "is a graph digitizer software which allows to automatically retrieve the ...
3
votes
2answers
144 views
How do I recover files from a single degraded mdadm raid1 drive? “not enough to start the array”
Given a single raid1 drive in degraded/rebuilding state, can it be force mounted?
If the drive was not in rebuilding state I'd be fine with the first command:
# mdadm --verbose --assemble /dev/md8 ...
3
votes
1answer
1k views
recovering ext4 partition after dd'ing over start of HD
I accidentally used dd and wrote over the first 208MB of my external disk. What I wrote over is a partition on its own (Debian nestinstaller) so what I see now is not my old (now damaged) ext4 ...
3
votes
1answer
213 views
Busybox NAS appliance
I have a NAS appliance that crashed last weekend. The IT guys apparently / maybe didn't recover it in the right way? There's about 50,000 directories in a "lost+found" directory each with a numeric ...
3
votes
0answers
89 views
How can I recover after Kate crashes?
I use Kate for coding and note-taking. Sometimes it crashes - often when I've got a lot open - and unsaved 'real' documents (eg, ones backed by files, that have been saved at some point) usually have ...
3
votes
0answers
74 views
Confusion with how to restore corrupt ext3 files if power outage occurs during a file write
I am running a small embedded system. Because the system will never be gracefully shutdown and will just have the power cable unplugged, I am running an initramfs but mounting an ext3 partition on a ...
3
votes
1answer
99 views
How can I dump the full system memory?
After starting VirtualBox, the computer became sluggish and then hung completely due to OOM. Usually, OOM should be starting killing processes in order to free up some space, but this did not happen ...
3
votes
0answers
2k views
How to recover most recently deleted directories on NTFS partition under Ubuntu 12.04
In Nautilus under Ubuntu 12.04, I accidentally selected several directories on a partition and deleted them at once (unfortunately, I deleted them by Shift+Delete such that they don't remain in ...
2
votes
3answers
528 views
Shift+delete vs rm -rf
Are Shift+Delete and rm -rf different? Is it possible to recover deleted data after performing either of them?
2
votes
1answer
470 views
A Live CD distro for getting data off a NTFS partition without X Windows
The Windows partition on my laptop seems to refuse to boot, and since I lack the original install CD, I was thinking of installing my preferred Linux distro, Arch on it.
I want to recover data off ...
2
votes
1answer
2k views
Why can't I copy my DVD with dd?
I tried dd, dd_rescue and ddrescue, all failed. I thought these tools bypass the filesystem and make a bitwise copy.
dd is fooled, it finishes but just produces a small file and states it's finished.
...
2
votes
3answers
184 views
How to make data-recovery very-very hard or impossible for Unix -computer before reselling?
I resell my Thinkpad and I want to make sure its old content in the harddrive is not readable. The Thinkpad has now Debian -installed but I sell it as-is so no OS needed. How can I can rewrite the ...
