Deletion of files needing recovery!

[chuckman]

I use Ubuntu 8.04 and I deleted a few JPGs from the recycle bin. I googled looking for some methods of recovery, and discovered that the only ways to do so is through using the command line. I am a complete computer novice, and I know nothing about the command line, or how to use it. Under the guidance of my helpful cousin Zack, I was able to install Foremost. However, with this done, I couldn't manage to use it to recover anything from that point, partially because I only have 1 GB left on my couputer space, and I can't delete anything or else it could overwrite the photos I want to recover. This all boils down to two questions:

Can someone explain and walk me through what needs to be done to complete and utilize foremost (in a language a novice could understand)

And lastly, and the more preferable option, can this be accomplished without the command line?

Any input is appreciated.

[oz]

Hello and welcome to the forums!

I'm not really familiar with Foremost, but my personal recommendations for data recovery are TestDisk and PhotoRec:

TestDisk - CGSecurity

PhotoRec - CGSecurity

You can get both apps on the Parted Magic LiveCD and that's probably the best way to use them. Good documentation for using them can be found at the bottom of the respective TestDisk and PhotoRec webpages. In your particular case, PhotoRec might be the best option.

[Rubberman]

The best tools for what you want on Linux are generally command-line tools. Also, which tools you can use depend entirely on the file system the data was on, such as ext2/ext3, vfat, ntfs, etc. Personally, I haven't used any of the tools mentioned here, but I have used e2undel and ext3undel for ext2/ext3 file systems. These are both command-line tools.

[Lakshmipathi]

Unmount your partition first .- don't install or run anything on it.
I would recommend -
ext3grep - Project Hosting on Google Code
HOWTO undelete removed files and directories on an ext3 file system

Try all above tools - If nothing worked for you as a last measure - before you give up - try
ext3carve | Download ext3carve software for free at SourceForge.net
Note I haven't updated this tool in past 2 years .It may not even work at all.

[chuckman]

@ozar I take it these are free, right?

@Lakshmipathi What is a partition!? I told you I was a novice!

[oz]

@ozar I take it these are free, right?

Yes, they are.

[Rubberman]

@ozar I take it these are free, right?

@Lakshmipathi What is a partition!? I told you I was a novice!

All Linux system code is open source, as is everything on SourceForge.net. Different licenses may apply, but one thing they all are is FOSS (Free and Open Source Software), so you can download and use to your heart's content. However, when I find some particularly useful tools in the community, I like to make a donation back to the development team. It may not feed them, but it will help encourage them! This is why I donate regularly to FSF (the Free Software Foundation) and various other groups and organizations that help keep free software free, and open.

That said, there are proprietary software packages that run on Linux, and some of them are very good. Examples may include Oracle or IBM's DB2 in the production-quality database domain, and a number of top-tier anti-virus programs. I use 3 AV programs, 2 proprietary (paid for) and 1 open source to fix clients' Windows systems when they get infected. However, most system management tools for Linux are free.

As for partitions, they are chunks of a hard drive that are allocated for different purposes. For example, the system disc on my workstation includes 3 partitions: / (the root partition), /boot, and swap. In this case, /boot contains the available kernel images and associated drivers, / contains all the stuff that the system needs to run, such as programs, configuration files, libraries, etc, and swap is the system swap space so I can run more programs than the available RAM would normally allow.

[Lakshmipathi]

To add more to what Rubberman said about partition, If you are already logged into the machine.
type

df -h

will show you list of mounted partition.If you see /home in "df" output and If you are deleted jpegs from /home/chuckman. then unmount the /home partition using the command

umount /home

and then install ext3grep on other partition and then recover the files.