Hello everybody,


I used to have a perfectly running Ubuntu 14.04 until the disaster has struck due to my ignorance and now I"ve lost my "Downloads" folder - 40GB without any trace.

I ran Testdisk on the hard drive (160Gb) and I've got the message:


" Hidden sectors are present.

size 312500000 sectors
user_max 312500000 sectors
native_max 312500000 sectors
dc0 312500000 sectors

Drive Configuration Overlay (DCO) present.

Continue even if there are hidden data. "


This very hidden data is the data I need to recover and Testdisk cannot access it.


How I got here: I tried to tidy up my Ubuntu 14.04 and from "Home" folder I had deleted some "unnecessary" folders like "Public", "Templates", "Examples" and I've renamed others.

Then I tried to do the same with the "Downloads" folder, but when I wanted to open it, I got the message: " the folder contains unreadable data and the content cannot be displayed"; however I had opened it before I've played with the "Home" folders!!

Next I've restarted the computer but the "Downloads" folder couldn't be found - it disappeared without any trace; however the free space on the hard drive has been increased by 40 GB the size of this folder.

Now my "Downloads" folder became the hidden data!!

What can I do? Please help me!


Thank you very much,

Andrew

This situation is one of the reasons why backups are important. If you have a backup of Downloads, simply restore it. If not, maybe next time you need one you'll have one.

The restart may have eliminated filesystem corruption that included your Downloads. Using admin privileges you may be able to find something in the lost+found directory on the disk containing /home, but don't get your hopes up.

When trying to deal with "hidden" files or directories it's typically much easier to use an OFM for access than an ordinary file manager. MC can be used either in a GUI terminal or on one of the VTTYs to see all files on a filesystem. If MC isn't installed, install it. It's in the standard repos. Maybe using it you'll be able to get lucky and find Downloads moved or renamed and you can move it back.

may i also suggest opening a terminal and issuing

may i also suggest opening a terminal and issuing

The size of the hidden sectors reported by testdisk is 160 GB.

312500000 sectors * 512 bytes is 160GB, which is probably the whole HD.

Hello everybody,

thank you guys for your replies - now I need to search the entire hard drive for the lost folder or its sub folders.

Could I run the midnight commander from the Ubuntu or could I launch it from a rescue cd?

Thanks,
Andrew

To add to the other answers, in cases like this the first thing you should be doing is making an offline image of your hard disk, or the relevant partition(s), to another location so that you have a safely backed up copy of the drive before you start mucking around with it trying to recover data. This is because you risk worsening the situation with your recovery attempts.

Also, my apologies for saying this, but I would emphasise what an earlier poster said - back up your data regularly. You should always have at least two copies of your data (including the original) on separate media, and preferably in two separate locations.

All the best with your recovery attempts.

what did you do to get your data to go into hide and seek mode? if you know you could try reversing the process.

It shouldn't matter. Rescue media may or may not have MC on it, just like MC may or may not have been installed in Ubuntu. Knoppix used as rescue media always has it. MC has many features useful in a rescue environment, such as file search, text editor, archive viewer and FTP client.