can I recover from wipefs?

timl · 03-23-2015, 03:43 PM

Hi, I don't know what possessed me but I just used wipefs on a disk

Quote:

sudo wipefs -a /dev/sdb

Is it possible to add a new superblock without affecting the rest of the disk? This is a backup disk so it can be restored manually. However this means copying across my network so if I can avoid I would like to.

Cheers

EDIT. I cracked and created a new partition table. Restoring the disk now. I would still like to know whether there is a recovery method. I notice gparted has an option to "attempt data rescue" is this worth a go?

veerain · 03-23-2015, 10:56 PM

If it has completely wiped the disk then no chance of recovery. Otherwise you may try using testdisk/phtorec.

syg00 · 03-23-2015, 11:33 PM

Given the description of what wipefs does, I would have tried (presuming ext[34]), "mkfs -S ..."
That's a capital S - see the manpage for caveats, but in your case would be worth a try.

A few years back I tested this and it worked - I deliberately did a mkfs.ntfs over an ext3 filesystem then "mkfs -S" and I could reference all the files, and fsck worked.
This was a small, new filesystem specifically built for the test. Limited number of files, and no fragmentation. My results may not translate to the real world.