GPT EXT4 2TB drive recovery & explanation & Advice please
 

Debian squeeze amd64
parted -l
fsck.ext4 /dev/sdb1
So the drive appears to be there and ok but no partition, when it should have one big one and about 16Gb free.

I tried gdisk but that scares me (Truth be told anythinglike this does)
gdisk /dev/sdb1
So I exited.

Does creating a new partion wipe the data from the drive? I haven't done that.

I was looking around at tools (parted Magic, RIPlinux) but unsure is any of them will fix me problem.

Was also thinking a forum for hard drives or even tutorials would be good.

Hi,

If your partition table is destroyed, chances are you will have hard time getting your data back. While not impossible, you will have to specify the superblock location directly. If the data are disposable (remember, you should always have backup), then use "gparted" to create a new partition table and new partitions. This will permanently wipe out all data on the disk. My advice would be to use gparted to make your partitions. Some utilities have incomplete or buggy GPT support.

Its one of my Backup data drives (containing backups) and all my TV DVD Box set ripped tv programmes. I can't phyically put DVD's in out of drives or the containing boxes hence why I use a drive. It took EONS of time to rip them, & I'm not sure I can designate that amount of time for my carers to be stuffing DVD drives with discs when they have to be doing my needs.

So I would like to have a go at trying to recover the files with no worry about loosing stuff. Good practice for other critical occassions.

1st thing I did was google "superblock location" and this led me too two possible ways:

I ended up here: http://unix.stackexchange.com/questi...t4-superblocks

and then this site: https://help.ubuntu.com/community/DataRecovery though it all seems to be for non ext4 problems.

Basically I'm getting the message your screwed with ext4??? (which must be me reading it wrong as why would the distro choose ext4 and gpart?) so I'm just going to through that thought away.

1) try to manually restore the superblocks.
2) use The sleuth kit and use "kfairbanks / sleuthkit" which is for ext4.



1) This is very confusing becuase if the super blocks are lost how come software can find the supper blocks?

2)
So Im going to buy a new Bigger than 2TB drive to image the 2TB drive too. This seems to be the common thing to do and then format the 2TB so I can save the recovered files from the 2TB image onto it.

I'm ordering a new drive, so say stop dont do that if there is an easier way?

Also is there a more up-to-date ext4 for recover super blocks guide anywhere?