Re: Any recovery after "mkfs -t ext3 /dev/hda1"-help!!!

On Thu, Apr 05, 2007 at 05:16:54PM -0500, John Thompson wrote:
On 2007-04-05, zlcsg2006@xxxxxxx <zlcsg2006@xxxxxxx> wrote:

Any help would be greatly appreciated!

I lost all data of a huge ntfs formatted partition.
My PC has both WinXP and Linux installed. I did a big mistake:
I used "mkfs -t ext3 /dev/hda1" from the linux partition. When I
rebooted, I realised what I did.I found out that the ntfs partition
isn't mountable anymore as a ntfs partition. It is possible to mount
it as ext3fs.

I would be very thankful if any of you could give me a pointer to
some sort of software or method to recover some of my data. Because
mkfs only needed some seconds, I think most of my data it is still
physically there.

While the data may indeed still be mostly intact, all the ntfs
filesystem structures are likely gone. Depending on how much you're
willing to spend, a commercial data recovery vendor may be your best
bet if you don't have current backups.

If you have more time than money, you could use "dd" to copy everything
to a file and manually search there for your data but it won't be easy.

There are tools freely available that will help with this sort of thing.
First and foremost to remember is to avoid working on the original disk
when mucking about with repairs. Ideally, one would boot with, say, a
knoppix live CD and copy hda to hdb, where hdb is a similar if not larger
disk using 'dd'. Then, one would remove the original disk and play at
data-recovery technician using the backup copy.

mke2fs writes the superblock, backup superblocks, inode tables and block
bitmaps on various places throughout the partition. Any files and
directories using space at those locations will be gone but the rest of the
file system structure will remain unless there was further activity on the
partition after the mkfs. Data recovery service bureaus are the best
solution for people without the confidence or expertise to do their own
disk mangling, but data recovery is not quire heavy magic and anyone with
some ability to write 'C' and read the file system structure from the
header files may be able to make headway, to say nothing of the efficacy of
arbitrary recovery tools which may be available on the 'net.

Competent data recovery firms are most useful when there is physical damage
to a drive requiring Heroic Measures to bring the disk to a point where it
can be accessed at all. For instance, changing the head stack is a
definite clean-room operation best performed by experts. Logical
filesystem problems are much more tractable.


Regards,

Steve

.

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