OT: fdisk

[Polytropon]

On Sat, 2 Oct 2010 21:02:32 +0200, Patrick Lamaiziere <patfbsd at davenulle.org> wrote:
> Le Sat, 2 Oct 2010 11:36:40 -0700,
> Robert <traveling08 at cox.net> a écrit :
> 
> > I tried to use "dd" and copy data to another spare drive. It appears
> > to work but then I can no longer mount that drive. Other than taking
> > it to a data recovery shop does anyone have any idea. 
> 
> May be "photorec" will help (in systutils/testdisk).
> http://www.cgsecurity.org/wiki/PhotoRec

You don't need an expensive recovery shop - FreeBSD has many good
tools for free. From my own experiences with data recovery, here's
a short list of tools to keep in mind (yes, photorec is on that
list, too - a very useful tool especially for use with SD and CF
cards from cameras):

System:
	dd			<- the very fist thing you use
	fsck_ffs		<- doesn't apply here as "NTFS" != UFS
	clri			<- as well, as further others may
	fsdb
	fetch -rR <device>
	recoverdisk

Ports:
	ddrescue		<- if dd doesn't work
	dd_rescue		<- as well
	ffs2recov
	magicrescue
	testdisk
		photorec
	scan_ffs
	recoverjpeg
	foremost
	The Sleuth Kit:		<- if everything fails
		fls
		dls
		ils
		autopsy

As I mentioned, work with copies only. If you have a disk big
enough (disks aren't cheap today, your data isn't), make a copy
of the copy and work with that. If you accidentally screw up the
copy, delete it and make a new working copy from the master copy.
Do not touch the original disk until you're done - and SURE about
being done.

If you fail to reconstruct the partition table, you can still get
the "bare data", even in form of separate files. Some of the
recovery programs listed above are able to process input data
where all partition and file system information is lost, i. e.
they operate on byte level (blocks) and contain algorithms to
determine files (begin, end, kind, magic). Allthough this work
often results in the loss of file names and directory structures,
the files theirselves come back.

I've experienced a similar kind of data loss in the past, so I
wish you good luck with recovery.

For the future: Make backups. Lesson learned. :-)




-- 
Polytropon
Magdeburg, Germany
Happy FreeBSD user since 4.0
Andra moi ennepe, Mousa, ...