Data Recovery After Clean Install

[blavv]

Hello all,

I have just upgraded my linux box. I did it by clean-installing the OS.
The installation was successful, but I just noticed that I had forgotten to backup some important files I had on this machine before the installation...

Now, is there any way (free of charge or not) to recover those files?

I guess this is not really a pure linux question, but I would really, really appreciate if someone could shed some light for me.

My distro is Debian, and the upgrade was from lenny (5) to squeeze (6).

Thank you...

[oz]

Hello and welcome!

I don't think the recovery chances are very good, but you can always try booting a liveCD such as Parted Magic, then run TestDisk to see what can be recovered:

http://partedmagic.com/doku.php?id=start

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

Instructions for using TestDisk can be found on their website.

[blavv]

Ooh... Thank you so much for such a quick response! I really appreciate your input! I will try it then...

[hans51]

and if those cant help
may be a google for

deleted files recovery linux
may find other options.
some 2 years ago I once lost all data on a camera ssd and got all data back but I forgot the name of the tool, however basically all recovery tools do the same procedure

important for successful recovery is that you have same partition now as before, and approximately same install size, else you may have overwritten the diskspace from your precious install data

to completely avoid such data loss in future
create a separate PARTITION (NOT /home!!!) where you store all important data and projects rather than in your /home and make sure you always KNOW where this partition starts/ends
that way any new install stays OUT of your data area on your disk

needless to say to backup regularly into another drive

what recovery tools do is to read (or attempt to) deleted data and write then to a defined NEW location, hence you need to make sure you NEVER overwrite previous (deleted) storage area on your drive, best use an external USB drive to store recovered data, that recovered data partition may need to be LARGE as it may write all existing recovered partition content to it
I do multiple backups daily - using freeagentGO (seagate) external fast USB drives with rsync - a full backup takes usually less than a minute

the less you play around (write new files, install, etc) the greater the chance for success

[blavv]

Hello again,


Thank you two for those helpful tips.

I have installed Testdisk/PhotoRec and am at the point where I can select the file extensions to recover.

The important data that I need to recover have the folling exts:

.MYI
.frm
.MYD

*OR*

.sql

I did find ".MYI" and ".frm", but no luck with ".MYD" or ".sql". If I cannot find the exts I am looking for, PhotoRec won't be much help...?

Also, some googling gave me the feeling that ".sql" is somehow supported with ver. 6.12, the same version i have...

Does anyone know or have experience on this...?

[hans51]

since PhotoRecis above all to recover lost/deleted photo files
google for a recovery for text files

sql files are simple plain text files with a precise internal structure but to the outside plain text
any text file recovery may help if you can either enter your extension sql or it has sql as default

look here
Data Recovery Software, File Repair Utilities, Hard Disk Data Recovery Software - Nucleus Data Recovery
or google for
deleted file recovery sql linux tools

good luck