Re: XFS-Partition trashed?
- From: Douglas Mayne <doug@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>
- Date: Sun, 12 Aug 2007 10:07:58 -0600
On Fri, 10 Aug 2007 18:50:42 +0200, Nikolai Försterling wrote:
Hello,I don't know how bad you have broken your filesystem. I am guessing that
i'm not sure if this is the right group to post filesystem problems to,
but i couldn't find one for filesystems, so i try asking here.
Please correct me if there's a petter place to ask on this topic.
Yesterday, i just wanted to reenable the boot ability of my XP-Partition
and later rewrite lilo to be able to boot both OSs again.
The layout is as follows:
hda1(swap)
hda2(extd)
hda5(ntfs)
hda3(ext3)
hda4(xfs)
I booted into the recovery console of the XP-CD and did a "fixboot", but
forgot to set the NTFS-partition (hda5) as active first, so fixboot
trashed my XFS-partition with FAT12 and a new bootsector in it.
Though i already googled and read manpages (testdisk,xfsprogs,etc.), i'm
not sure if i can restore my beloved debian installation with lots of
data.
And no, i've got no recent backup...
Before i try to write anything to the harddisk/partition table/partition
types, i'd like to make sure that i do the right steps.
So i'm asking if it is possible to restore the XFS-filesystem, maybe
simply by setting the partition type to 83 and doing something
xfs-related magic.
I really hope that someone here knows about XFS and if/how it is
possible.
it could be very bad, and the problem is magnified by not having a backup.
If your data is worth saving, stop using your system and get professional
help with this problem.
It has been quite a while since I studied the FAT filesystem. I reviewed
some documentation that I have about FAT, and the operations that the
format command may have executed. The size of the FATs which are
written after the BPB depends on the size of the disk. I assume FAT can
use 12-bit, 16-bit, or 32-bit based cluster offsets. My documentation only
covered 12-bit and 16-bit based cluster counts. The format likely damaged
an area of the disk by zeroing it to use as the FATs. My documentation
stated that format usually creates a primary FAT, and a secondary FAT; the
number of redundant FATs is a variable.
I haven't studied the internal workings of XFS. I use it, though. I know
that it is a journalled filesystem using balanced-trees. I don't know
where it stores key indexes, or how rendundant the indexes are. I would
guess that if certain key structures which describe the disk layout were
damaged by overwriting, then recovery could be very difficult. This is
where professional assistance may be helpful. However, finding the right
professional service may be a difficult problem, too. I would guess most
recovery services are setup to help with recovering Windows-based
filesystems. But without the working indexes, finding your data could be
similiar to finding a needle in a haystack. However, if you only lost the
text to your novel, then you might be able to recover some or all of it
easily. It just depends on a lot of things, including your expectations.
--
Douglas Mayne
.
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