Help !!! 400 GB Data lost caused by SuSE

[TheStytle1]

Good morning every one
i have 1 Tera WD HD which was plugged to my laptop when i was installing openSusE 11.1 and during installation the hard disk accidentally unplugged .
due to this i lost everything , when i realized that i formatted my laptop to windows 7 to check if the hard disk will work but the system don't even recognize it . after that, i used Active partition recovery which helped the system to find the HD with the same used space information. but when i open it . it shows only the files with no folders at all.
when i unchecked the check box " Hide protected system file" from tool-folder option , i found a hidden folder named "found" with too many files it is with .chk extention. i think that open suse was trying to swap my file system from fat32 to ex3 and the data trapped in ex3 file system.
please i need an urgent help
thanks

[gogalthorp]

The install will not normally change a format type unless you told it to. Exactly where were you installing to?? ie was the install going to the plugged drive or the internal one??? Was there space available for the install or were you assuming that the installer would resize things? The fact that the process was physically interrupted could easily have caused any system to corrupt a partition. ie try it with a windows install and most likely you will have the same results.

It is no fun having a corrupted file system no matter the cause. The question is how much trouble are you willing to go through trying to recover the lost data. Chances are that most of the data is in the Lost folder but is going to be fragmented in most cases and you must paste it back together by hand. You can recover the drive by simply reformatting but the data is another question. It would also help to know exactly what you were trying to do ie what was you partitioning scheme?

[TheStytle1]

Thanks you for helpping ^_^
the thing is that i used the defult option, and unfortunately, the installation was installing the system in my usb-mass storage. i realized that when i found my HD separated in 3 partitions, one call "swap something" with ex3 file system type as well as the other two . and the Active partition recovery reassembled the three back to one fat32 partition title my book again. i can format the HD but all data i got in life is in this HD so it wold be tragic to let it go .
i thing my HD need some sort of swapping again to fat32 or it has lost its directory map or something. so please guide me to this approach if it could work.

[gogalthorp]

I hate to tell you this but somethings are just not reversible. If the FAT table is scrambled there is little you can do but use a recovery program to patch things back together. The problem is the data is scattered over lots of sectors and the FAT is what glues it all together. Without a FAT there is no coherence in the data so you don't know what sector goes with what file for binary files such as MPEG and the like it is all binary data is pretty much impossible to know what sector goes with which other sector. Text files are usually easiest since you can read the text. But a modern computer system has far more binary type files and text files are generally of little importance. The best a "recovery" program can do is to try and gather up what it thinks is files and put them in a "Found" directory. These files and fragments will contain most of the data in randomly named files but the files can be in theory patched back together by hand.

For the future (and this is true of all OS) when installing or upgrading a live system ie one that you want to preserve the data on.
always
1) backup any important data.
2) make a partitioning plan ie know what partitions are needed and where they are to go and how they are to be formated.
3) resize and or move any existing partitions if needed (after backing up)
4) double check the plan that the installer recommends to be sure it corresponds to your plan if not correct it!!!!
5) always backup any important data
6) and lastly always backup any important data

[TheStytle1]

oh god i hate myself !!!. i got what you are trying to say and now i am trying every single recovery and partition program i can get. and the other thing i attend to do is to reinstall the ****ing SuSE again on the dameged HD. but still i want to believe that the files are not corrupted but only not visible to the system or how you explain that the files without folders still valid unharmed ^_^. by the way... the folders was visible to ****ing SuSE with no files.

you mentioned that i have to join .chk files by hand , could you tell me HOW please

[TheStytle1]

i see many veiws but no replys , please if anyone have any idea just tell me ^_^

[oz]

Welcome to the forums!

I fail to see how it was OpenSUSE that caused a loss of data, but you can try running TestDisk and if needed, PhotoRec, for an attempt at recovery:

TestDisk - CGSecurity

They are the best utilities that I know of for recovering lost partitions and folders/files. If they won't work, I know of nothing else you can do other than perhaps pay some recovery service to work on it for you.

You can find TestDisk and PhotoRec on the Parted Magic LiveCD:

Parted Magic News

Best of luck with your recovery efforts.

[TheStytle1]

Thanks ^_^ i am trying testdisk now, i hope it works.
just i want to add that all partition program indicate that my HD is consist of" Linux swap 2" part and ext3 while windows opens it as fat32.
wish me luck and waiting for more adds

[D-cat]

Those .CHK files are your files, though they will be in the chunk sizes of the partition format (so like, a 4K text file may show another 60k of junk after it). It's a sign that the recovery program(s) has done its job.

There are a couple programs that can help rename the extensions of your files so they reflect the correct format. They're not perfect, but it cuts out a good chunk of time vs. looking at each one with a hex editor.

Recover CHK Files

Another thing that can help with what the above programs miss is IrfanView (with ALL the plugins). By including CHK in the list of files it opens, it will analyze every files as it opens it, and if it recognizes the format, it'll ask to rename to the proper extension.

Beyond that, I can't offer much suggestion. I had this happen to me as well. It's a year later, and I'm still sorting out files. It appears to have been a bug in the USB controller (it was actually a USB to SATA adapter which froze up regularly. I took the drive out and installed it internally to work on it reliably).