Recovering a formatted ext3 partition

sinistre · n00b Joined: 18 Jun 2002 Posts: 29 Location: Norway

I accidentally initated a quick format of an ext3 partition. I'd really like to recover the data on it. Can this be done without special equipment. Anybody got any suggestions? This really blows, wasn't critical data but it would be nice to have it recovered anyway.
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Ole Johansen
GPG keyID 7353806D 1999-10-11

klieber · Posted: Tue Jun 25, 2002 11:49 am Post subject:

I believe the quick format rewrites your inode tables and journal, so I think you're pretty much hosed. Yes, the data is still on there, but without the inode table to go with it, getting it off is pretty tough. As you alluded to, you can retrieve the data with special tools and techniques, but there's no "easy" way that I'm aware of.

You could always restore from backups. (you do keep backups, right?

)

--kurt
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The problem with political jokes is that they get elected

sinistre · n00b Joined: 18 Jun 2002 Posts: 29 Location: Norway

I hadn't backed up this yet... don't think the quick format completed, though probably close. If I remeber correctly there should be some inode tables at the end of the partition also... they might still be ok... any way to check?
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Ole Johansen
GPG keyID 7353806D 1999-10-11

hbp4c · Posted: Tue Jun 25, 2002 5:17 pm Post subject:

Before you write new data to the disk, I believe I ran across a program a few weeks back that lets you edit the disk directly much like the old norton utilities for dos did in version 8.

Let me see if I can dig up a link on that tonight when i get home and am at my machine. Ill post back whatever i find.

But whatever you do, do not write new information to the disk!!!

h

sinistre · n00b Joined: 18 Jun 2002 Posts: 29 Location: Norway

hbp4c · Posted: Wed Jun 26, 2002 4:15 pm Post subject:

Here is what I came up with - 2 documents and a program

LDP's ext2 undeletion howto:
http://www.tldp.org/HOWTO/mini/Ext2fs-Undeletion.html

LDP's ext2 Directory recovery howto:
http://www.tldp.org/HOWTO/mini/Ext2fs-Undeletion-Dir-Struct/index.htm

And finally - maybe useful, maybe not, the linux disk editor program:
http://www.icewalk.com/softlib/app/app_00969.html

Personally, I would think that the disk editor program would be the most useful, because I have some experience using norton's disk editor program for dos. I do not know however, if any of these solutions will help with a partition that has been dumped to a file with dd, presumably it would be ok. I have not had a chance to use disk editor though for linux, so I cannot guarantee results or even suggest how to go about using it unfortunately. {RTFM}

Good luck, let me know how it goes.
Howard

sinistre · n00b Joined: 18 Jun 2002 Posts: 29 Location: Norway

Much appreciated - I'll be working on it tomorrow, now it's bedtime.
_________________
Ole Johansen
GPG keyID 7353806D 1999-10-11