Is there any recovery software available for ext4?

Question

Well, I have accidentally deleted my Ubuntu drive. I just want to recover all the contents of /home.

Is there a way to do it? I referred to foremost, where I need to specify the extensions of files. And in my case, I don't know actual extensions. So, is there any utility which can let me recover my /home folder alone?

I have not even formatted that drive or touched it at all. So no write has been done on that drive.

If you have suggestions on how to recover, please tell me.

Solution 1

Take a look at this:

Best tool to recover removed files

Formatted and lost 6 years worth of photo memories.. any way to get this back?

How to recover Ubuntu partition after computer failure?

Where the answers of some other people under those questions may also be helpful for you.

Good luck!

Solution 2

The first thing to do, is to STOP USING THE DISK! Everything that gets written to it runs the risk of overwriting your data. Mount it read only and copy the things you find to a different device.

After that, the tools mentioned by the other contributors are good places to start. Add Magic Rescue, and any raw sector editor to the mix. Magic Rescue is good at finding pictures, videos, zip archives and MS Office files. And the sector editor can be used to find most documents provided you remember some words out of them to use for searching.

Solution 3

Try TestDisk/PhotoRec:

1. CTRL ALT t to open a terminal

2. sudo apt-get install testdisk and type your normal user password

3. sudo photorec

Good luck!

EDIT: take a look at https://help.ubuntu.com/community/DataRecovery too.

Solution 4

I'd suggest computer forensics tools, like The Sleuth Kit and its Autopsy browser.

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Comments

[jaseelder]

Thanks @Geppettvs D'Constanzo, I used testdisk to detect and correct my partition table. This helped me to see all the date that got lost.

[Byte Commander]

+1 for emphasizing that further disk writes can ruin potentially recoverable data!

[kirbyfan64sos]

The link to the Israel Linux Remix Team System is now dead (and apparently has been since ~2013), and it's not available on the Internet Archive. Do you have a copy or remember what it said?

[Geppettvs D'Constanzo]

Thank you @refi64 for informing about the dead link. It was documenting my very first attempt to recover a 1 TB disk data, step by step. Unfortunately it is no longer available and I can't reproduce the steps.