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file recovery - urgent


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Micha
External


Since: Feb 14, 2007
Posts: 1



PostPosted: Wed Feb 14, 2007 8:20 pm    Post subject: file recovery - urgent
Archived from groups: linux>debian>laptop (more info?)

Hello,

Please excuse this is not strictly debian or laptop related,
but i'm in urgent trouble.
I accidently deleted a folder with 3500 files on my laptop,
just when i wanted to do a really overdue backup.
It's about 5 GB, nearly 3 months of work, and the last
backup is a month ago where most of the stuff was added
just recently, including hundreds of hours of the working time.

When i realized what happened i shutdown the laptop.
The files are in the user's home on the root filesystem,
a journaling ext3. debian sid.
I was so shocked i didn't look for the exact time, but i
think i could boil it down to a 10 minute time frame.
I've no experience with file recovery.
I would be able to boot into a cd or dvd which i could
download and burn on another machine.
I'm aware a time based recovery could mean i'd have to reinstall
the KDE session and do more cleanup afterward, but that's
absolutely unimportant, if i only could recover the files.
It would be worth a complete reinstall.

Any good idea what i can do ?

micha

ps. And no, nothing in the trash folder, it was a real delete.
pps. And yes, i will never again be lazy with backups.




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Martin Steigerwald
External


Since: Jun 10, 2006
Posts: 47



PostPosted: Wed Feb 14, 2007 9:00 pm    Post subject: Re: file recovery - urgent [Login to view extended thread Info.]
Archived from groups: per prev. post (more info?)

Am Mittwoch 14 Februar 2007 schrieb Micha:
> Hello,
>
> Please excuse this is not strictly debian or laptop related,
> but i'm in urgent trouble.
> I accidently deleted a folder with 3500 files on my laptop,
> just when i wanted to do a really overdue backup.
> It's about 5 GB, nearly 3 months of work, and the last
> backup is a month ago where most of the stuff was added
> just recently, including hundreds of hours of the working time.
>
> When i realized what happened i shutdown the laptop.
> The files are in the user's home on the root filesystem,
> a journaling ext3. debian sid.
> I was so shocked i didn't look for the exact time, but i
> think i could boil it down to a 10 minute time frame.
> I've no experience with file recovery.
> I would be able to boot into a cd or dvd which i could
> download and burn on another machine.
> I'm aware a time based recovery could mean i'd have to reinstall
> the KDE session and do more cleanup afterward, but that's
> absolutely unimportant, if i only could recover the files.
> It would be worth a complete reinstall.
>
> Any good idea what i can do ?

Hallo Micha!

BIG DISCLAIMER first: Try at your own risk. I have no practical experience
with these tools...

.... but they might just do what you want so it might be worth a try:

martin@shambala:~> apt-cache search ext3 undelete
e2undel - Undelete utility for the ext2 file system
recover - Undelete files on ext2 partitions

(search http://packages.debian.org)

Cauion: They do not work with ext3 only with ext2 as their package
descriptions claim! I do not know whether it might be enough to remove
the journal via tune2fs, but AFAIK then ext3 should behave just like
ext2.

Important: I recommend to make a block based copy of the partition with
via ddrescue or dd, for example FIRST! So you have a second chance if
anything goes wrong at your first attempt.

ddrescue /dev/hda2 hda2.img
(store hda2.img on some external harddrive, replace /dev/hda2 with your
partition device file)

You could then work with the image file only not altering whats on the
harddisk until you are confident that it works! Use somehting
like "mkdir /mnt/recover ; mount -o loop -t ext2 hda2.img /mnt/recover".
(or even better make another copy of the file first;-)

You should do everything with a Live CD. I recommend one of these (I am
not sure whether they have e2undel or recover pre-installed, but if
anything else fails you could install it yourself, I think on recent
Knoppix this even works via aptitude otherwise you might have to compile
the tool):

- GRML: http://grml.org (text mode based, as limited GUI support)
- Knoppix: http://www.knoppix.org (has full GUI support)

Maybe someone who has experience recovering deleted files from ext2/ext3
filesystem can give you better hints. This is all untried and untested!

Regards,
--
Martin 'Helios' Steigerwald - http://www.Lichtvoll.de
GPG: 03B0 0D6C 0040 0710 4AFA B82F 991B EAAC A599 84C7


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Preston Boyington
External


Since: Oct 06, 2006
Posts: 6



PostPosted: Wed Feb 14, 2007 9:30 pm    Post subject: Re: file recovery - urgent [Login to view extended thread Info.]
Archived from groups: per prev. post (more info?)

Micha wrote:
>
> Please excuse this is not strictly debian or laptop related,
> but i'm in urgent trouble.

not a problem for me. here's some links i had saved in case something
like this happened to me

#### DISCLAIMER ####

I HAVE NOT TRIED THESE PROGRAMS PERSONALLY AND HOPE THAT I WILL NOT HAVE
TO FOR THE FORESEEABLE FUTURE BUT AM MORE THAN WILLING TO LET YOU TEST
THESE FOR ME.

#### Smile ####


Software links:
http://www.cgsecurity.org/wiki/PhotoRec
http://www.inside-security.de/insert_en.html


Howto and Info links:
http://servers.linux.com/article.pl?sid=06/08/21/1558230&from=rss
http://linux-tweaks.blogspot.com/2006/09/linux-data-recover.html
http://www.cyberciti.biz/tips/repairing-linux-ext2-or-ext3-file-system.html
http://www.linuxquestions.org/questions/showthread.php?t=428962
http://www.linuxquestions.org/questions/showthread.php?t=417651

i know several people that i talked to in the past recommended me using
"dd" to make an image and to work from it. use a livecd like Knoppix,
Ubuntu, DSL, whatever to work from so partitions won't be mounted. copy
things over a network to another computer to work from or to an external
drive.

looking back over these makes me want to test some of them on an old
drive. let us know how this turn out and be sure to keep careful notes
as to what you are doing. this will help you out now and others later.
good luck.

if i get a chance later i will see if i can dig up any decent
information that might help. this is all i had on hand.


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Ed Wiget
External


Since: Feb 14, 2007
Posts: 1



PostPosted: Wed Feb 14, 2007 10:10 pm    Post subject: Re: file recovery - urgent [Login to view extended thread Info.]
Archived from groups: per prev. post (more info?)

on the MLUG web site, i did an article on how I recovered a lot of files from
a damaged hard drive. It is a rather laborous way of doing things but it
works great. The post is here:

http://www.maysville-linux-users-group.org/ftopict-147.html

Another option that is much simpler that will work not included above is if
you can boot a live linux cd (recommended ones below) and create an image of
the partition that holds the /home directory to an external usb device or a
different hard drive (needs to be ext2 or ext3 if the partition is greater
than 2gb. I will use hda1 as the example below for the partition containing
the /home partition and a usb drive mounted on sda1:

# first create the mountpoint in the live cd for the usb drive
mkdir /mnt/usbdrive

# mount the usb drive
mount -t ext2 /dev/sda1 /mnt/usbdrive

# create the image using dd (make sure you substitute the correct partition):
dd if=/dev/hda1 of=/mnt/usbdrive/hda1.img

Now, with that image, you can use any live cd that has autopsy and sleuthkit
installed on it and run autoposy on the image and recover the files that
appear as deleted.

Recommended live cds with autopsy include backtrack security or the FCCU
Forensic Live CD:
http://www.remote-exploit.org/backtrack.html
or
http://http://www.lnx4n6.be


On Wednesday 14 February 2007 02:11:02 pm Micha wrote:
> Hello,
>
> Please excuse this is not strictly debian or laptop related,
> but i'm in urgent trouble.
> I accidently deleted a folder with 3500 files on my laptop,
> just when i wanted to do a really overdue backup.
> It's about 5 GB, nearly 3 months of work, and the last
> backup is a month ago where most of the stuff was added
> just recently, including hundreds of hours of the working time.
>
> When i realized what happened i shutdown the laptop.
> The files are in the user's home on the root filesystem,
> a journaling ext3. debian sid.
> I was so shocked i didn't look for the exact time, but i
> think i could boil it down to a 10 minute time frame.
> I've no experience with file recovery.
> I would be able to boot into a cd or dvd which i could
> download and burn on another machine.
> I'm aware a time based recovery could mean i'd have to reinstall
> the KDE session and do more cleanup afterward, but that's
> absolutely unimportant, if i only could recover the files.
> It would be worth a complete reinstall.
>
> Any good idea what i can do ?
>
> micha
>
> ps. And no, nothing in the trash folder, it was a real delete.
> pps. And yes, i will never again be lazy with backups.
>
>
>
>
> --
> To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to debian-laptop-REQUEST DeleteThis @lists.debian.org
> with a subject of "unsubscribe". Trouble? Contact
> listmaster DeleteThis @lists.debian.org



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Paolo
External


Since: Nov 09, 2004
Posts: 168



PostPosted: Sun Jul 15, 2007 10:20 am    Post subject: Re: file recovery - urgent [Login to view extended thread Info.]
Archived from groups: per prev. post (more info?)

On Wed, Feb 14, 2007 at 09:11:02PM +0200, Micha wrote:
> Hello,
>
> Please excuse this is not strictly debian or laptop related,
> but i'm in urgent trouble.
> I accidently deleted a folder with 3500 files on my laptop,

late replay, but might come handy for anybody in similar situation.
I had the problem to recover photos from an SD trashed by Linux/MacOSX
usb-storage brokeness, by chance - reading up the badblocks-HowTo - I went
to 'photorec' website:

http://www.cgsecurity.org/wiki/PhotoRec

It turned out that photorec claims to knows about and search for a long list
file types, on several types of partitions and fs.

photorec was very effective to recover my stuff out of the image-file image
of the 0.5G SD (I selected JPG, MOV, DSC). That might have been a rel. easy
task though, as jpg+mov have been recorded sequentially and were likely well
ordered, so YMMV a lot.
But worth a try for sure. Thanks to Chritophe. Check also links to dfrws.org.


--
paolo

GPG/PGP id:0x1D5A11A4 - 04FC 8EB9 51A1 5158 1425 BC12 EA57 3382 1D5A 11A4
"Indeed, it does come with warranty: it *will* fail."


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