Re: [tlug] How do recover from a re-format?

["A. Sajjad Zaidi" <sajjad@example.com>]

On Fri, Feb 07, 2003 at 01:35:40PM +0100, Godwin Stewart wrote:
> 
> Unless you made a note of your partition table *before* you rewrote it, I
> think you're more or less fscked.

Not necessarily. If he is lucky and the installer didn't do a format, he
could try rebuilding the partition table by hand. I did it once on my
system of about 12 partitions and after accepting the worst, managed to
get all the data back.

You have to try to remember how big each partition was and in which
order it appeared. Start with the 1st one. Create the partition and try
to mount it. You should be successful if you got the size correct. Else,
change the size and try again.

There are also tools which will scan your drive and estimate where a
partition started. http://www.google.com/

In case a format was done, you'll have to find fs recovery tools and may
get your data back if you are *really* lucky. I lost some very large (a
few GBs) and critical files a couple of months back when they were
overwritten by corrupted data, but managed to recover about half of it.

The partition was reiserfs so I got in touch with Namesys (the reiserfs
developers), who gave me a custom tools package and that did the trick.
They charge a nominal fee for support, but its well worth it.

> Rule #1: As soon as the machine works (how you want it to), back up your
> partition tables, MBR's and bootsectors.

And not on the same machine please. :-)

-- 
A. Sajjad Zaidi
System Administrator
Digital Garage Inc.
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