How to recover data from harddrive

[perfectpol7]

How do I recover data from a hard drive that has been install with fedora, should I slave it on another fedora pc. What are the procedures steps to take.

[devils casper]

Boot up from LiveCD of any Linux distro, mount Fedora partition(s) and copy data in External Disk, Stick or any other media.

Post the output of fdisk -l command here.

su -
fdisk -l

[nullpointer]

Is there something wrong with the hard drive? Will it not boot any more? Is it a Linux data-only drive?

I usually attach a drive to a USB adapter and connect it to my Linux laptop to back up any data. This works for any drive, including those formatted with Windows. I have even been able to retrieve some data from failed (crashed) hard drives this way, depending on the severity of the problem.

Windows will not read a Linux formatted drive without special software, and even then it is slow. There are several applications available (sorry, I can't post URL's yet).

I have also had success with using a Linux live CD and copying files from the hard drive to a network share.

[perfectpol7]

the results of the fdisk -l code is

Disk /dev/sda:160.0 GB 160041885696 bytes
255 heads, 63 sectors/track, 19457 cylinders
units = cylinders of 16065 * 512 = 8225280 bytes
Disk identifier: 0x0006cd12

Device Boot Start End Block Id System
/dev/sda1 * 1 25 200781 83 Linux
/dev/sda2 26 19457 156087540 8e linux LVM

Disk /dev/sdb: 500.1 GB 500107862016 bytes
255 heads, 63 sectors/track, 60801 cylinders
units = cylinders of 16065 * 512 = 8225280 bytes
Disk identifier: 0x00092b15

Device Boot Start End Block Id System
/dev/sdb1 * 1 60802 488386583+ 8e Linux LVM

Disk /dev/sdc: 500.1 GB 500107862016 bytes
255 heads, 63 sectors/track, 60801 cylinders
units = cylinders of 16065 * 512 = 8225280 bytes
Disk identifier: 0x00081343

Device Boot Start End Block Id System
/dev/sdc1 * 1 60802 488386583+ 8e Linux LVM

Disk /dev/sdd: 500.1 GB 500107862016 bytes
255 heads, 63 sectors/track, 60801 cylinders
units = cylinders of 16065 * 512 = 8225280 bytes
Disk identifier: 0xdd17c7f1

Device Boot Start End Block Id System
/dev/sdd 1 60801 488384001 83 Linux

the external harddrive is /dev/sdd. Need to copy i contents in the /dev/sda1 to the external harddrive

[Rubberman]

Do you want a bit image that you can later restore in-toto? Or a file system backup? Either is possible.

[perfectpol7]

Need to recover data that I may use it again. I have tried to use knoppix 5.3.1 but failing to get the data, only viewing the harddrive boot without other folder in it

[Rubberman]

The easy way to recover this data is to have a large enough external drive (USB hard drive, or whatever), boot a liveCD/DVD/USB drive. Manually mount the hard drive partition you want to recover, and either copy it in its entirety to the backup drive, or create a tarball (optionally compressed) written to the backup drive.

If a folder in the booted system is empty when you access it from a liveCD, then it is likely that folder was a mount point for another partition. You'll need to figure out which drive/partition that was (you can find that in the /etc/fstab on the drive you are recovering) and mount that as well.

[oz]

I always use the copy/paste method as described above by Rubberman if the data isn't corrupted. If data and partitions are corrupted, take a look at TestDisk and PhotoRec for possible recovery:

TestDisk - CGSecurity

The PartedMagic LiveCD is probably one of the easiest ways to try one or both of them:

Parted Magic LiveCD

[perfectpol7]

The data is not corrupted, Now am able to go to the command prompt, if i use code locate (folder name) i can see the folder path. How do I copy these folder to external harddrive, the external harddrive is /dev/sdd1 and the data i want to retrieve is on disk /dev/sda. When i used cp /dev/sda1/home/Administrator/User Data/Info /dev/sdd1/New Folder.
I am getting this error message cp:target '/dev/sdd1/New folder' is not a directory.

How do I copy the home directory files to the usb external drive

[nullpointer]

You have spaces in your directory names. Linux treats spaces as a separation of arguments for the commands. You have two options:

1. Rename the directories to remove the spaces (replace with a _ or something)
2. Use the escape character '\' to force the spaces to be treated differently. For example, your target directory with the escape character would look like this: "/dev/sdd1/New\ folder". The \ tells the system to treat the next character as space in the directory or file name instead of a separation in the arguments.

An easy way to remember this is to use tab completion. If you start typing "cp /dev/sdd1/New" then hit the tab key, it will complete the rest for you, including the escape character. Try it.

-Rick