Recover ext2 data after reformat??

swell · 09-22-2004, 09:40 AM

Stupid enough. I accidently reformatted an ext2 partition to reiserfs.
I have made a copy by "dd", and grep some text data from the copy.

How can I recover almost all my data?
Is there a handy tool?
Thanks. recover ext2 data after format

villusion · 08-10-2005, 12:53 AM

Ok, I kind of did the same thing, except I accidentally created a swap out of my my hda2 drive..I didn't actually reformat it though. Did you ever figure anything out?

I tried using r-linux, but it created a bunch of $Inode files on my winodws system, how do I convert that back?

Sample Files

-David
villusion@new.rr.com

ac1980 · 08-26-2005, 03:24 PM

The first thing to do imho is to restore partition type byte back to 0x83 using fdisk, but without reformatting!

If you didn't actually use the swap file (i.e. neither you nor init script run a swapon on it) you'll probably be able to recover the backup inode tables, mkswap only affects the very beginning of the partition. You should read these info/man pages: e2fsck, dumpe2fs, mke2fs (see -n option).
If you enabled the swap partition, then chances are most of your data has been overwritten several times, so any time spent would be wasted.

If the interested partition is a fat32, instead, you should probably google for a windows native recover app and cross your fingers...

Best wishes.

villusion · 08-26-2005, 10:50 PM

I did try that, but when I remount I can only see a few files. I never did enable the swap file... I've saved the drive though in case I ever figure anything out.

Thanks for the response!

Sören Schneider · 04-03-2006, 10:53 PM

If you still have your HD.
Make this HD as slave.

Have a look at this:

http://www.linuxquestions.org/questi...d.php?t=428962

Good luck