this post was submitted on 25 Dec 2023
30 points (100.0% liked)
Linux
1259 readers
87 users here now
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Linux is a family of open source Unix-like operating systems based on the Linux kernel, an operating system kernel first released on September 17, 1991 by Linus Torvalds. Linux is typically packaged in a Linux distribution (or distro for short).
Distributions include the Linux kernel and supporting system software and libraries, many of which are provided by the GNU Project. Many Linux distributions use the word "Linux" in their name, but the Free Software Foundation uses the name GNU/Linux to emphasize the importance of GNU software, causing some controversy.
Rules
- Posts must be relevant to operating systems running the Linux kernel. GNU/Linux or otherwise.
- No misinformation
- No NSFW content
- No hate speech, bigotry, etc
Related Communities
Community icon by Alpár-Etele Méder, licensed under CC BY 3.0
founded 5 years ago
MODERATORS
you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
view the rest of the comments
First step, in case you didn't do that yet: Create a disk image of the partition - you don't want to try data recovery on the actual data. Easiest is just using dd to dump the disk to another drive.
Next try running testdisk on the image to see if it can find the backup superblocks - if it does you can feed that to fsck to restore the filesystem.
If you know the blocksize of the filesystem you can also run mke2fs with the -S parameter - this will just write the superblocks. Again, only do that on a disk image, not the actual drive.
If the disc is corrupted it may be failing, recommending ddrescue over dd is probably a better call not knowing anything else about this situation. Essentially, no reason not to use it.
I swear by ddrescue. It's a situation I strive to never be but i've been there before. I used it once to rescue an employees masters capstone project from their dead work laptop.
After reading about it - true. Disadvantage of doing this stuff for a long time - you miss new developments. Only reason I'm aware of testdisk is that I lost the sources of my own superblock search tool, my old binaries broke with a newer glibc, and before reimplementing it I checked if sombody else had done that in a more usable form in the meantime.
That's one of the solutions I saw that I currently can't do because I have no other device that I can use for that.
You can decide yourself if the data in that disk is more valuable than the price of a new disk to store the backup image. If it's not that valuable I guess you can one-shot it.
You can do all of that on the device - but you only get one shot. If you mess up that's it - so no sensible person would try any form of data rescue directly on the device. Storage is cheap, if you don't have sufficient space on your computer just get another external disk.
I know you wont understand where I'm coming from so I wont bother explaining it. If I need another storage device than I'll just have to wait until next year to get another storage device.
Edit: I don't understand why I'm getting downvoted but it proves to me that I made the right choice in not explaining my situation.
In that case I'd recommend waiting until next year before attempting recovery.
The hard drive should be connected by SATA or eSATA when making the image. Connecting over USB is just asking for more trouble when the drive is not working correctly.
That has changed over the last few years - I'd prefer a proper usb3 to sata bridge over a shitty sata controller - and the quality of integrated sata controllers isn't that great nowadays.
Another tool that has helped me when the others couldn't was RecuperaBit. It has the same restrictions though, you have to do it on an image of the drive.