Ubuntu :: Possible To Recover Home Partition Using TestDisk?
Aug 30, 2010
I have stupidly and inadvertently formatted my home partition on my other system while trying to 'downgrade' to Ubuntu 9.10. I have isolated the hard drive and am currently using Testdisk to discover the partitions on there. The scan hasn't yet finished however it appears there are two entries of each partition.
Here:
Linux 0 1 1 4012 254 57 64468776
Linux 0 1 1 4012 254 57 64468776
Linux 4013 0 1 14032 254 59 160971296
Linux 4013 0 1 14032 254 59 160971296
Linux 9079 0 1 14032 254 61 79586008 [home]
Linux 9079 0 1 14032 254 61 79586008 [home]
When attempting the downgrade, I was wanting to keep the home folder (and root and swap) all at the same size. I am pretty sure I fouled up by trying to revert the file system type to ext3 from ext4. Which partition out of the two 'home' ones, I should be attempting to keep? I cannot see a difference between them but this is how testdisk has reported the drive. Apart from the standard 'back up everything next time' and more fitting for me 'pack up your PC and never use it again!', does anyone have any specific advice on recovering my original home partition?
I was using testdisk to recover one of my lost partition and when I rebooted my system it says , "error unknown filesystem ".I am giving a screenshot of gparted
My main partition having all my data like movies, music, files,etc has become inaccessible. Its file system was NTFS. Due to some recent resizing using GParted, the partition as well as my WIndows 7 OS has become unbootable due to some errors. The data partition's file system has become unknown. I don't care much about the OS but I would like to recover my drive. I am trying to achieve this using Testdisk and Photorec but haven't met with much success so far. The main problem is I can see my partition and all my files through Testdisk but I am not able to copy them to another drive. When I try to copy the option I get is of copying them to the DVD and not to any other partition.
While setting up my laptop on a new hard drive (a bad mobo caused writes which pretty much rendered teh old hdd unusable) I was asked if I wanted to encrypt my home partition.
I've been wanting this for several years - even going as far as trying to get a copy of CheckPoint. That's waht my organization uses on all Wintendo laptops and is required.
In any case, I said "yes" and am happily using my laptop with an encrypted home partition. I'm assuming based on this - [URL] - that it is using EncryptFS as the scheme.
if I were to misplace my laptop, how easy would it be for a forensics team to retrieve my data. Let's assume I have a fairly strong passphrase, such as BisZumBitterenEnd3. [URL]
I had some major problems after the recent Ubuntu upgrade and had to boot from a live cd. I have a separate /home partition, but it was encrypted using the default install encryption in the 9.10 install cd. How can I get to my files so I can back them up?
I have tried this but it did not work: http://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?t=1337693
i was using 10.10 and this disaster occured when i tried to install 11.04 replacing 10.10. i have a separate home partition, while installing 11.04 i chose one weird option called "encrypt home partition"i didnt chose to format the home partition but once the installation is over, i have all my data lost in home directory.Is ther any chance that i could get the 165 gb junk data or atleast some 200 mb of important data
I am trying to recover data from my blackberry and a USB stick and after some research on the web I came through the Test Disk software which i just downloaded with Ubuntu Software Centre. I was looking to find information on how I could use this and recover files from my Blackberry and USB stick.
I had 10.04 installed in parallel with a bad windows OS. Used the 10.04 to pull the documents, pics, etc off of windows. Worked great. Then when I tried to delete the windows partition it screwed grub up an instead of just re-installing grub. I re-installed ubuntu, what the heck it was gonna get wiped anyway. I didn't back up the pics and documents. I did however have them in all the ubuntu folders for my pics etc.
I feel like total crap, anyway, how good of a chance do I have at getting something back with testdisk? After doing a "deeper search" I come up with multiple partitions but it won't let me restore all of them. I really dont care if I can't boot to a single one, just as long as I can get the data back. (always can use a live CD).
Because a customer of mine is inefficient in doing backups I have to do a recovery if possible. Drive had vista on it and was really bug infested to point of a reload. I reloaded vista from scratch and then my customer says "Oh, I guess I forgot to back those files up...".Is it possible to recover some files even though vista was reloaded? I suppose the basic answer is "As long as they havent been overwritten yet".
Im running testdisk and its made a ton of directories with files in them that I assume it has recovered. Im going to have to write a script I guess to grab the files as there are about 600 directories!I guess what Im asking is 1. What are my chances of success? 2. Has anyone ever recovered files from a vista re-install? 3. Is testdisk the best way of going about it (with photorec).
I tried to recover deleted data using testdisk tool and now my partition table have some errors. Even though i have 3 partitions and 1 unallocated disk fdisk -l shows only 1 partition
Code: vishnu@vishnu-laptop:~$ sudo fdisk -l [sudo] password for vishnu:
WARNING: GPT (GUID Partition Table) detected on '/dev/sda'! The util fdisk doesn't support GPT. Use GNU Parted.
So, I wan't completely paying attention to the default partitioning that Red Hat Enterprise 6 does.
I was setting up a base image for VMWare and the disk was 200GB, but for some reason the default is for about 40% to go to the root partition and then the rest of it to go to /home (this doesn't include the 2GB or so in swap).
Is there an easy way to recover the space under /home and expand the root partition? Assume there are no user accounts created.
I messed up a 500GB USB hard drive by confusing it with another drive, accidentally trying to erase it, realizing my error and pulling out the cable in panic. Running Testdisk has found no partitions to fix. Photorec can find most of my files but sorting them out again is going to take weeks. Are there any methods I can use to try and save my folders/file system on the HDD? I'm very much a novice as far as partitions and file systems go.
I'm not sure exactly how, but somehow one of my partitions was corrupted yesterday (GParted showed it as unallocated space). I tried using testdisk. It found the lost partition, so I happily let it rewrite the partition table. The lost partition did return, but then I found out another partition has disappeared (the one most important to me) and in its place there is an empty NTFS partition and an empty ext3 one (the original was an ext4.
The two new partitions seem to be those that were merged to form the ext4 partition). I tried testdisk again. When I run "testdisk /dev/sda" and choose "Analyse" the incorrect partition table is detected. I tried running "testdisk /dev/sda5" (sda5 is the NTFS partition) and it finds a partition labeled "magic" which is the name of the lost partition but testdisk cannot recover it. I get this:
Code: TestDisk 6.11, Data Recovery Utility, April 2009 Christophe GRENIER <grenier@cgsecurity.org> [URL]
Disk /dev/sda5 - 47 GB / 44 GiB - CHS 5823 255 63 The harddisk (47 GB / 44 GiB) seems too small! (< 75 GB / 70 GiB) Check the harddisk size: HD jumpers settings, BIOS detection...
The following partition can't be recovered: Partition Start End Size in sectors Linux 0 1 1 9137 234 56 146800640 [magic]
EXT4 Large file Sparse superblock, 75 GB / 70 GiB I tried deleting the second partition and moving the one after it so that there is 75GB available but it didn't help. I have lost worth of a year of my work. The worst thing that could ever happen to me!
I tried to install Ubuntu next to XP. After restart - no XP and no Ubuntu. Something wrong with loader I guess, I see command line prompt (of the loader I guess).
So I restarted from liveCD. But no "Repair Install" option like in XP CD. So, I deleted partition to install again on top of old, then learned a loader possibly could be fixed.
So, the problem is: testdisk cannot restore partition I deleted. I didn't write on disk anything. May be swap space after couple reloads from liveCD corrupted it?
It complains "The harddisk (...) seems to small!", it sees some other partitions and doesn't see what Gparted and Disk Utility.
Let me know the best approach to get back XP running (having Ubuntu would be good too).
Here below are the screen captures for details.
Quich Search results. Can't recover what's found. Why 4 partitions are found? Notice, "The harddisk seems too small !" Could this be a problem? HDD is not Maxtor anymore
The gap is there but no deleted partition shown
Essentially same thing... going for deeper search
Deep Search hasn't recover anything new. And shows same results as Quick Search (2nd testdisc image )Hit "continue"...
Now the partitions shown as deleted because of overlapping. The partition to be recovered is still not in the list.
Anyway, my final goal is to get WinXP back and if possible, install Ubuntu. It's nice that installer still sees the XP. Too bad the loader doesn't. how to get it done.
Unlike during installation of XP, ubuntu doesn't offer to utilize the deleted partition. Is it going to stay empty/unallocated? Forget the empty space, will I get XP running if I continue and install?
I had a tri boot of Win 7 /XP and Mint...I was using EasyBCD 2.0 as a boot manager...I booted Mint by configuring the NeoGrub option in Easy BCD..I wanted to uninstall Win 7 and so what I did was the following
1. Edited BCD bootloader settings ...Marked XP as my default and deleted Win 7 entry...
2. Logged out and wiped my Win 7 partition
With my fingers crossed , i rebooted but Easy BCD booted flawlessly with 2 choices XP and Mint(GRUB)...As Easy BCD is not meant for XP, I thought of restoring original NTLDR of XP so that things would be in place and thinking that this cud avoid problems of detection by other Linux OS I deleted manually the Easy BCD menu.lst file and NeoGrub.mbr in my root...That was it , after I rebooted, I got boot screen of EasyBCD but whichever option I select,I got an error message that address not Valid-NTLDR not found or something like that I booted my XP live CD and like many times before ran
1.Fixmbr 2.Fixboot 3.bootcfg /rebuild
After that , now when I reboot , I am getting "Invalid Partition Table" On booting from a linux CD , I can see the files are in place..I have to get boot sector and partition table fixed...
I was having trouble creating a USB Startup Disk in Ubuntu and used the command:
sudo dd if=/dev/zero of=/dev/sdb bs=1M count=1
This was a mistake as my USB flash drive was on /dev/sdc. If I am understanding this correctly, the command above deleted the MBR and the partition table. This disk had a single "/storage" partition on it. I googled a solution and found that the "testdisk" program seems to be the most popular solution for things like this. I ran it, selected an "Intel/PC partition" type, set the partition to a non-bootable primary Linux partition, wrote it, and rebooted.
Whenever I run:
sudo mount -t ext3 /dev/sdb1 /storage
I get:
mount: wrong fs type, bad option, bad superblock on /dev/sdb1, missing codepage or helper program, or other error In some cases useful info is found in syslog - try dmesg | tail or so
Dmesg shows the following:
[20246.273941] EXT3-fs error (device sdb1): ext3_check_descriptors: Block bitmap for group 1 not in group (block 0)! [20246.279376] EXT3-fs: group descriptors corrupted!
When I run:
sudo fdisk -l /dev/sdb
I get:
Disk /dev/sdb: 400.1 GB, 400088457216 bytes 255 heads, 63 sectors/track, 48641 cylinders Units = cylinders of 16065 * 512 = 8225280 bytes
Something bad happened to my partition table,so right now I'm working from a Live CD. My partition table is completely screwed, although the data on the lost partitions hasn't been overwritten. I've been messing around with TestDisk for about an hour, but I still didn't figure out how to fix my problem. Before the crash, I had 5 partitions:
NTFS - 30GB NTFS - 8GB ext4 - 20GB
and here comes the extended partition:
linux swap - 8 GB NTFS - 400GB
TestDisk can see all those five partitions. I can mark swap as Logical, but I can't do so with the 400GB NTFS partition - there is just no selection. Turning on "expert mode" didn't help. I have read about using sfdisk to fix partition table, but I don't think I'm able to do it by myself.
Here's how it looks in TestDisk:
Code:
Disk /dev/sda - 500 GB / 465 GiB - CHS 60802 255 63 Partition Start End Size in sectors D HPFS - NTFS 0 1 1 3915 254 63 62910477 D HPFS - NTFS 3916 0 1 4959 254 63 16771860 [Windows XP]
[code]....
I've filled sizes according to TestDisk's findings. First 3 partitions were OK, the problem lies in the extended partition holding 2 logical ones. By the way, TestDisk is able to enter the 400gb partition and see the files.
I resized my root partition yesterday to make it include the unused 28GB at the end of my drive, but something went wrong and now I can't mount it again.. I think this has to do with the computer coming with Vista preinstalled and the partitions not being aligned to cylinders. This is what the partition table looked like before the resize (according to fdisk):
Code:
Disk /dev/sda: 160.0 GB, 160041885696 bytes 255 heads, 63 sectors/track, 19457 cylinders Units = cylinders of 16065 * 512 = 8225280 bytes Disk identifier: 0xdec3533c
[code]....
None of the last two partition schemes works, when I try to mount sda6 I get an error saying that the XFS superblock contains an invalid magic number. I've tried running xfs_repair on it, but even though it found a few secondary superblocks it couldn't verify them. I've tried running testdisk with the "Cylinder boundary" option set to "no", but it would not find my root partition... The log from the search is here I don't really care about the other partitions, all I need is my old root partition so that I can copy all the important stuff to another drive and then start from scratch with a new partition table (and remove the recovery partition aswell since I don't need it).
Trying to clean install 11.2 dual boot with Win xp already installed. How do I create a new home partition, don't want to preserve the existing home partition from a previous attempt. DVD installation and automatic config keeps saving the thing.
Dummy me let root run out of space because I didn't know to use logrotate. I was able to compress the system logs but not before the damage was done me thinks; now the computer is unbootable. I booted from a LiveCD and got my old partitions mounted under /media/oldroot to try and recover files; however, I forgot that I had encrypted my home. I found [URL] and was following it; however, I seem to run into a bunch of path issues after I chroot.
The chroot command returns: bash: groups: command not found
The su command returns: -su: cut: command not found -su: getent: command not found -su: expr: command not found -su: groups: command not found
Finally, the ecryptfs-mount-private command returns: -su: ecryptfs-mount-private: command not found
I have separate partitons for /, /home, /tmp, /usr, and /usr/local and bothered to mount the first 2. (If only I had been ambitious enough to create a /var). I was running Ubuntu 10.10.
a client brought in an 160GB external HDD and wanted to get the files off it, there appeared to be no partitions on the disk but i thought it may have been formatted to use the whole disk. I tried to mount it as the various FS types the client thought it may have been to no avail.
I ran testdisk on it which told me that it previously had a mac partition table and a 210GB partition on it (which is larger than the disk) could anyone enlighten me as to whether or not this is even possible, and if so how could i retrieve the data?
so, after long time of succesfull use of kubuntu, i encountered a 1st major disaster yesterday while using kphotoalbum. It has somehow frozen my machine in so mighty way, that it apparently corrupted a directory with majority of my pictures , which now appears to be empty .My home lies on a separate partition, its encrypted aand using btrfs and I am using kubuntu 10.10. So, could anyone give me some clues how to unencrypt my home partition, that i could obtain an image of partition or whatever else usable for photorec to check for pictures?
I run a server where multiple people can access it via SSH and have access to the same folder. Someone recently decided to stop using my server so I deleted their login account inside the User and Group GUI inside gnome. I accidentally selected delete files owned by this user. I didn't think much of it because the user didn't actually own any of the files since it was shared among all of them. Anyway, ALL the files in that shared home directory vanished, including the home directory. How can I recover this? It didn't move all the files to the root trash or my local user's trash folder. Are the permanently deleted?
I upgraded from ubuntu 9.10 to 11.04. During installation (Natty) I chosen the option to encrypt the home folder. After a day the system crashed. It was showing that disk is having health problems. If I boot from live cd then i cant access the home folder. When I tried to mount the home folder, it says "Reading directory: input/output error"
Because I used Karmic without problem I reinstalled the Karmic, then I can mount the home folder, but cant access it as it was encrypted.Now Karmic is installed. I tried to boot from Live CD of Natty and tried to mount /home folder, it says some super-block issues.How to access the files in the home folder?
computer running ubuntu 10.10 is failing to boot and I want to access the private data in the home folder in order to recover data onto another disk. How do I go about doing this? As far as I can remember its not encrypted but am still unable to access the data to backup.
recently i made a backup of my home directory in 10.10 before reinstalling 10.10. again.This time I chose to manually define the partitions (50GB Root, 25GB Swap, 325GB Home)Now i wish to migrate the old home into the newly installed home, which is on a separate partition.I have found the following documentation URL...Still, as a beginner I am not quite sure about the necessary steps to perform.As the new home is located on a separate partition is it possible to simple delete all directories there and copy all directories from old home to new home with rsync?
Do I have to install all the software that corresponds to the old home first followed by migrating home or first migrating home followed by installing the software such as thunderbird, Texlive2010 etc.Guess that migration should take place at a later stage. Otherwise my old profile files from firefox and thunderbird will be overwriten by new ones?
Been digging around and not finding anything that quite works.
Background: I had an existing 10.10 install and 10.04 on another partition. When I installed the 10.04 I told it to use the existing /home partition which is also being used by the 10.10 install. All good, both users have directories with all their data in the same /home partition.
Issue: So, as the 10.04 was 32bit (experimenting but another story) I decided I would replace with 10.04 64bit. All went well except when I did the manual partitioning I screwed up and instead of setting the existing /home partition to 'use but don't format' - which I think is what I must have done last time - I left it as 'don't use and don't format'. So, obviously, now the new 10.04 install has its /home inside /, which I don't want. I want it on the existing /home partition as it was with the previous 10.04 install.
Question(s): Is there any simple(ish) way of doing this without a reinstall? Not a major problem as I have only just installed and can do it again without losing anything but time, but I would like to figure out a way to do it without if possible.I want to essentially move the /home/user directory (rather than the /home) and make it /media/home/user inside the existing partition. Seems easy enough on the surface but becomes involved as I investigate.Ubuntu 10.04 minimal install with Xfce DE.
I logged in to Recover Mode ("Drop to root shell prompt") this morning to do something. Naturally, I wanted access to my encrypted home folder.
The README file says to run ecryptfs-mount-private. However, that command returns an error: "ERROR: Encrypted private directory is not setup properly."
This cannot be correct, because if I log in normally, I get my home folder without any problem.
How can I access my encrypted home folder when I boot via Recover Mode?
