General :: Recovering Files On External Disk Caught In OS Installation
May 10, 2011
I was installing Ubuntu to the internal disk in my main machine, with all external drives unplugged for safety - then discovered I had accidentally chosen the external drive and it wasn't unplugged. (Seeing three drives not two listed as installation targets should have tipped me off, but I guess my IQ was low that day.)The external drive, in compliance with Murphy's Law, was my backup drive with all vital current files.The last few months of work gone.Now the drive shows only the stuff I normally expect in / on any Linux machine. It mounts showing as ext4, but the disk was (I'm 98.5% sure) originally ext3.However, the installation did not finish.Whatever files got copied, clobbered only a fraction of the disk. df reports only 1% of the space used.Maybe the bulk of my valuable files are okay, and could be recovered with some tool?
There are other questions on this site about file recovery, but many are for Microsoft Windows, or for malfunctioning disks, or some other situation. I'm on Linux with a physically healthy external disk. I'm fairly sure that the more recent and more important files are in multiple copies on that disk, so if one copy is clobbered there's hope to get the second copy.
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Aug 24, 2010
My powerbook died (motherboard or something...). I took out the Hard Drive to mount in an external enclosure. I tried accessing the drive in both windows and mac - no luck. So, I thought I'd try it in Ubuntu, thinking maybe it would show up - no luck. My question: is there any way to access the files from my drive using linux? Is there any way to mount it? The drive is spinning, and when I enter sudo fdisk -l ; I get this:
Disk /dev/sda: 250.1 GB, 250059350016 bytes
255 heads, 63 sectors/track, 30401 cylinders
Units = cylinders of 16065 * 512 = 8225280 bytes
Sector size (logical/physical): 512 bytes / 512 bytes
[Code]....
This: Disk /dev/sdb: 160.0 GB, 160041885696 bytes is the drive I want to get my files off of. So ubuntu is reading the drive in some fashion.
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Mar 26, 2010
Can't delete files from external hard disk.
Getting message,"Input output error or unreadable/corrupted file"
Is there any way to delete this?
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Aug 10, 2011
I really need some help here. I was installing Ubuntu 11.04 supposedly on a Desktop but I had my external hard disk connected via USB. This external hard disk had two NTFS partitions with lots of important personal and my works.
I accidentally installed Ubuntu upon it and I believe I had created new Linux partition for the Ubuntu installation. Is there any way to undo everything?
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Apr 25, 2010
I purchased a larger hard drive to upgrade my HTPC running MythTV and a Samba file server. I put the old hard drive into an e-SATA enclosure and can still boot to it to access my files, but I can't seem to mount it correctly under the new installation to copy over my files even though I have the mount passphrase and encrypted filenames key.I have tried using this howto, but I run into problems with the encrypted filenames.This is how I'm doing it. I replaced the actual key data with A's and B's to protect my keys:
Code:
$ sudo -i
# ecryptfs-add-passphrase --fnek
[code].....
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Jul 2, 2010
I have a laptop that I have been running 64bit lucid on after some problems with NFS Samba and SMB the installation got a bit trashed after some workarounds I removed nautilus completely and rebooted and got the looping login screen........ then I tried a suggestion to purge gdm but that left me with a blank grey screen and a mouse pointer. X11 has failed so I have no graphics
I can login properly to the drive from the terminal and can access my drive contents... I cannot load dolphin or nautilus from the terminal. So I have booted from a live cd and have moved some of my data to another partition but some is locked to the owner (me). How can I get my locked data opened so I can copy or move it to another drive, so I can perform a fresh install.
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Apr 6, 2011
I have an external hard disk with lots of big files and a lot of small matlab script files .m. I would like to grab all the files inside that harddisk that have the .m extension or the *.mat file extension (both are matlab files). Of course this is a
-first-find the *.m files script and
-then copy the files into the hard disk.
What I do not know is how I can also keep the structure of the folders containing the *.m and *.mat files when I will copy them in my local hard disk. As this external hard disk contains 2TB of data it is not possible to copy all the files first and then remove the unnecessary. So I have to find and copy only the files I need but with also keeping the tree structure that the external hard disk has.
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Nov 27, 2010
I plugged my external hard disk into my computer and it gives me this message: Quote:Unable to Mount:Error mounting: mount exited with exit code 13: ntfs_attr_pread_i: ntfs_pread
failed: Input/output error
Failed to read of MFT, mft=6 count=1 br=-1: Input/output error
Failed to open inode FILE_Bitmap: Input/output error
[code]....
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May 6, 2011
I didn't know a resize operation on a 750 GB disk was going to take 40+ hours, and I was biting my nails the whole time, until the power went out when "only" 8 hours where left.I can still mount the partition, and many of the files are still there, but some files show as '? ? ? ? ? filename.ext' with ls -l.If I try to go inside such a directory: Input/output error.
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Sep 15, 2010
i am a new guy here..i unfortunately removed all my files from /home folderrm -rf ~ /. picasa / As some of the files were important i tried recovering data using foremost..i used the command foremost -i /dev/sda1 -o /mnt/foremostThen there started a process..it was downloading something..and i left the computer for an hour or so..when i return there was nothing on screen..so i reloaded the system..And after that when i try to login i get the error"xsession: warning: unable to write to /tmp; xsession may exit with an error"..so when i googled for it i found its because there is no memmory in my /root ..so i tried login via console (tried ctrl+alt+f1..after the login screen appears..when i type ctrl+alt+f1 i get a black screen)..but nothings happening...how can i login via console..can my datas be recovered.
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Apr 6, 2011
I was trying to fix some hardware on my laptop and i ended up mucking the whole thing up. The HDD seems to fine though. I have it in a external HDD enclosure and it's plugged into my mothers desktop through usb.I'm trying to print some files I have, but my home directory on the external HDD is encrypted.
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Jan 19, 2011
I have 2 RAID1 hard drives with possibly hardware errors, (when I tried to mount them in a degraded array, they won't start, throwing some Buffer I/O errors) So I used ddrescue to make a disk image out of one drive, ran losetup to use the image file as loopback device:
Code:
losetup /dev/loop0 imagefile.img
but when I tried to assemble a raid array including the /dev/loop0 device like:
Code:
mdadm --assemble /dev/md0 --force /dev/loop0
it will complain that no superblock is found on /dev/loop0 device. With desperation, I tried to create a legacy raid array with following command, of course, including one of the bad drives:
Code:
mdadm -B /dev/md0 --level=1 -n2 /dev/sdb1(bootable partition on the bad drive) /dev/loop0
I successfully created a new RAID1 array, but when I tried to mount it
[Code]....
Now the only thing I haven't tried is to clean the superblock by doing --zero-superblock, and not sure if that will solve the problem. Should I get a second drive to hold my broken drive image so that I might be able to assemble a good RAID1 array or should I continue working on the only disk image file I recovered from one of the broken drives?
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May 14, 2010
I had a dual boot (windows 7 + debian), both of them installed in my internal hard disk, with the GRUB in it. I have recently installed a second linux distro (mint), but I put it in an external hard disk. Now the GRUB allows me to boot any of the three operating systems, but I need the external disk to do it. It seems that after the mint installation the GRUB is now working from the external disk (if the external disk is not connected, the machine does not boot.) �Is there a way to change the location of the GRUB, to the internal hard disk of my laptop?
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Mar 12, 2011
I'm testing my ability to recover a failed disk on a three disk software RAID 5 setup.
I have used a 10.04 alternate install disk to setup a three disk RAID 5 array according to this: [URL]. This is for a RAID1 setup. I followed it exactly except that I performed the steps on three drives rather than two and selected RAID5 instead of RAID1. Each disk is 500GB and has a 26 GB swap partition and the remaining space on each disk set as / with the boot flag on.
I installed the OS on my array and everything boots without a problem. After I booted up I started a terminal and ransudo dpkg-reconfigure mdadm to set the boot degraded to true and rebooted.
Next, I shut down the computer, disconnected the power on drive 1 (sdb) and then tried to boot. I get this (not verbatim):
Quote:
mdadm: CREATE user root not found
mdadm: CREATE group disk not found
raid5: raid level 5 set md0 active with 2 out of 3 devices, algorithm 2
mdadm: /dev/md0 has been started with 2 drives (out of 3)
[Code].....
*then a list of common problems and then:
ALERT! /dev/disk/by-uuid/bunchanumbersnad letters does not exist. Dropping to a shell
Then it dumps me to initramfs. MD0 is the swap partition. At this point I don't know what the heck to do. I'm skating on the edge of noobidity and this is pretty much over my head.
I want to use this server as a virtual machine server and the desired behavior would be that, if a hard drive should fail, the server would alert me via email and continue to run in a degraded state.
Is it even possible to install the OS on the array and run it degraded? Given the desired behavior, should I be looking at something other than RAID5? My client is broke so I'm trying to avoid a hardware RAID if I can do it.
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Jul 16, 2010
I learned a couple of days ago why you should do regular backups. Left my laptop working for the day in hot weather. When I came back it had crashed. On reboot it no longer booted up. I could still access the BIOS and boot from alternative media but not from the hard drive. The laptop tried to access the hard disk for a couple of minutes (hard drive light was blinking) and then failed. I made an ubuntu live usb stick and am currently working from there, trying to access my hard drive so I could image my data on another disk before sending the laptop for repairs. All my data is on that disk including my passwords and the password for this site conveniently so I had to register a new account to post this thread.
The laptop is IBM Thinkpad X41. The hard drive is accessed during when boot options are presented, again when the live cd boots up and determines the hardware available and also when manually probing for hard disks using the script below. The hard disk however does not show up in dev. If I could get so far to get it there, I could use dd_rescue to image it away. My hope lies in that the drive still spins up and is accessed producing error messages, however indicating that the system still knows it exists. Excerpt from dmesg concerning the drive:
[Code].....
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Jan 2, 2011
I have a few hard disks fully encrypted with Truecrypt. They have not been partitioned, just encoded right of the bat with Truecrypt. I just use Truecrypt command line to mount them, supplying password whe asked.
So from a linux standpoint, they show up as disks with unallocated space.
But I recently updated (moved) my linux from Ubuntu to Kubuntu. In the process, the partition manager asked where to install the new OS, I answered erase existing system and install there. But I noticed too late that the install program decided to install GRUB on another disk, one of my encrypted disks, instead of the system disk already selected. I don't know why, but it did. Now this disk shows up in linux as a disk with multiple partitions, and of course I can no longer mount it with Truecrypt.
I haven't done anything with the disk, except from trying to mount it in Truecrypt. So apart from the GRUB install, nothing else was touched on the disk.
I know Truecrypt place a backup header towards the end of the encrypted disk, so it should still be there intact, but since I now have multiple partitions, Truecrypt is certainly confused and cannot see the end of the disk since I now have 4 of them (partitions).
I am not a beginner but I am hesitant to attempt something that could kill all hopes of recovering the disk. It is a 2TB disk with a lot of data on it. I could probably make a copy of the entire disk but this means buying another 2TB disk....
One of the first idea was to kill the current partition setup to leave it "unpartitionned", so like it was before, maybe Truecrypt will now find the backup header. But before I do so, I would like opinion of real experts on linux.
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Jan 18, 2010
I've 2 computers (one at the job, one at home), different motherboard types but same chipset, having AM2 AMD CPUs but different clock speed. I don't have (I don't want to buy) internal hard disks for these computers.
I would like to buy one external USB HDD and install the latest Ubuntu. I will carry this HDD to my job and my home. Is it possible to use this HDD as boot HDD on both computer? Even they are not same just similar? Is this a problem for Ubuntu?
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Apr 9, 2009
I have got a hold of a extra hdd along with a hdd enclosure. I have tried looking for information on how to install linux on to one but haven't been completely successful on my search. So I turn to all of you. I was also wondering if its possible to have it were I can use it on multiple computers so I can use it for computer repair.
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Jun 30, 2010
I want to install Ubuntu onto a partition on my external hard drive, but my CD burner is broken so I can't just boot up with a live CD and do it that way. So can I install Ubuntu onto my external hard drive with the Startup Disk Creator that comes installed on Ubuntu? And if not is there another way I can do this?
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Nov 21, 2010
I recently upgraded to 10.04 and during the upgrade process my external hard disk was plugged in. Now everytime I boot up ubuntu informs me that sdb1 is missing and wont boot up till I ask it to "skip" waiting for it. Also I am assuming because of this I have trouble mounting any other external hard disk other than my own, keeps giving some sort of unable to mount problem
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Dec 9, 2010
In the past I have been able to succesfully install ubuntu on several external usb drives with up to 500gb in size.Now I am trying to install a copy of ubuntu 10.10 on an external usb iomega 1tb eGo drive but I am having major issues.The installer reports the total disk size as only 124 gb, instead of the 998gb that gParted reports for the same disk. Proceeding with "use the full disk" installs ok, but it doesn't boot.Grub2 reports that it cannot find the kernel.After some desperate attempts to repartition and after some googling I think that the issue may be with the sector size, which fdisk -l reports as 4096kb (all my other drivers report 512kb) and I have the impression that linux is not ready for it (or I lack the knowledge, which seems more likely).I have also tried to install fedora 14. This distribution reports the correct disk size, installs properly, but again, it cannot boot (Fedora uses grub, not grub2), with a very similar message to the grub2 installer.Because of the way I work, I need my external usb drive to be able to boot linux. And I find it difficult to believe that linux doesn't handle 4096kb sector disks, so here I am asking for help . Please note I am not a linux expert.
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Nov 18, 2010
Trying to install 10.04 to an existing Win7 (64) system that uses a RocketRaid 2340 controller. Windows installs just fine; reads the external driver file every time. Linux never has installed on this machine.
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Mar 22, 2010
Trying to install 10.04 to an existing Win7 (64) system that uses a RocketRaid 2340 controller. Windows installs just fine; reads the external driver file every time. Linux never has installed on this machine.
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Jan 25, 2010
I plan to reformat & reinstall my linux (centos).Before doing this, I got to backup my files into my USB external hard disk from Seagate (FreeAgent). The problem I faced is that I could not copy file into the hard disk even I was in root user. It prompted me that it is only read-only. I just wonder why.I have tested with my thumb drive. It worked. May I know why I could not copy file to the USB FreeAgent hard disk. Due to file system?
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Jul 24, 2010
I have RedHat Linux running on my VBox guest on my Windows host. I need to install RedHat Linux on the attached external usb hard disk ,connected to my guest machine.how can install redhat on this external usb hard disk?
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Jan 24, 2010
While trying to create a bootable SD to install Ubuntu on a netbook, I accidentally formatted a part of a removable HDD that was connected to my computer. If I remember correctly, the partition I formatted wasn't the main partition of the HDD. In that case, does it make sense that the whole disk was wiped out? On that HDD there's a year worth of work, I really need that back.
I was using PhotoRec with some luck: it started to recover files, but with no names, which is almost useless, considering a lot of it are recordings - useless without their names. Is there any good recovery program that will recover all my files incl. names? Is there a easier oprtion, considering that I think I didn't really format the big partition of the HDD? What may it have been, the small partition?
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Feb 3, 2010
I installed Ubuntu 9.10 on a 100 GB partition of my 120 GB hard disk. I left the other 20 GB as free space. I moved my data (about 20 GB) to my home folder. Everything was fine for two days. Then I installed a few packages with the help of Update Manager.he installation, I was asked to reboot. Upon reboot, I was always taken to the Memtest86+. It was as if GRUB wasn't detecting my ubuntu installation.Then I installed Ubuntu again by taking up 20 GB of the existing 100GB partition. I am currently using this installation. When I try to access the older installation (the 80 GB one), I find that all my data in my home folder is broken. (screenshot attached - homefolderbroken.png). homefolderbroken.jpgWhen I see the properties of the 80GB partition, I can find my data is still present (screenshot attached - data.png
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Jun 23, 2010
I can't boot into Ubuntu 10.04. Because of this problem. [URL] ppl have told me to ditch wubi and just have a clean install so i guess i will since it seems like the only option ppl are recommending to me. but i need to get my files of ubuntu first. i cant get into root.disk thu win7 so i am running live cd atm. but in live cd i do no see it also. where are my files?
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Jun 18, 2011
A friend of mine had inportant files on his windows 7 PC. the pc took a virus, he took it with some "experts" wich happily DELTED the partition and reinstalled W7, and apps, WITHOUT backing up his files.
Ibe faced similar cases before, and on windows ibe used Recuva with mixed resutls, but. Is there an application in linux i can install on my opensuse 11.4 box to do the same task? Can you guys recommend good linux software (available for suse) that will do this? I read about "TestDisk", but ibe never used it.
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Mar 21, 2010
I need to get back two avi movie files but I've deleted hundreds and any recovery might try and drop them back on my small hard disk and overwhelm it! I know the files include the word 'Archer' but I'm using Formost, which is very easy to use, but it doesn't seem to allow for the searching of specific files by name. I can recover by type ie, avi, jpeg, pdf.....
Are there any recovery programs that will list files in a table so I can pick the ones I want to recover or do a search in Terminal for my 'Archer' files?
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