Let's talk about stupid.......

[Silearth 6]

We all know that certain members of D.A.R.K have recently jumped on the Linux bandwagon. Most opted to dual-boot while went all the way and ditched Windows for good(I may go back to dual booting if I can get a new system when Sacred 2 comes out).

 

So when I decided to drop windows I looked at the partition manager and planned out my strategy. I had four partitions--one for windows, one for Linux, a Linux swap partition and a mysterious partition. I copied all my pictures and documents from the windows partition and got rid of that partition. I checked the mystery partition, it did not seem to hold anything and it was pretty small--one gig.

 

I removed the mystery partition and even the swap partition. Booting from the CD, I stretched my Linux partition to fill all of the available space. The mystery partition seemed as if it were another physical drive. Somehow this seemed right and so I turned it into a swap partition.

 

Booted up Ubuntu once more and everything ran perfectly. It was three in the morning so I went to bed. In the morning I showered, dressed for work and grabbed my flashdrive as I ran to the car.

 

At work I went to pull something from the flashdrive and found that it was not usable. Windows 2000 kept telling me that it needed to be formatted.

 

Now my flashdrive holds all of my writing--everything. It has some projects from work and a friends resume that I updated--the only copy.

 

I can go on forever, but I will skip ahead to the punchline. After fixing my flashdrive I realized that the mystery partition on my computer was in fact my flashdrive, which was plugged in the entire weekend. I can replace everything except for my friend's resume.

 

So, anyone know of a Linux tool to recover data from a formated drive?

[Schot 407]

Oh yikes Sil. Baaaaad news huh. I did this for a friend once but I can't for the life of me remeber what program I used... *browsing... browsing...* Whatever it was I found on the net it was in fact free and very effective. My friend managed to salvage most of what was lost but it was salvaged from a deletion and not a format. I don't know if there is a difference. What is key though is not to move or add anything on the drive.

 

What you need to look for is "Data recovery tool" or "Data recovery utility" maybe even throw in the word flashdrive as there are tools made just for flashdrive data recovery. You might try http://www.tucows.com. It's largely shareware.

 

Good luck!

[Silearth 6]

He He He.

 

Ubuntu forums to the rescue. found a program called photorec that can recover files from flash devices. The names are messed up, but I looked at a few of the files and they seem to be in perfect condition. This includes my friends resume.

 

The good thing is that once I realized my mistake I put the flashdrive away.

 

Here is a link to the information

Clicky

Edited March 15, 2008 by Silearth

[Schot 407]

Great news Sil. I'm glad you got that sorted. Ubuntu to the rescue indeed! Looks like "Undelete"

was the word search of the day, haha. :cha (18):

[masteff 64]

Thus ends today's lesson in why you need a data scrubber utility if you sell or donate a used computer that had sensitive data on it. As easy as 1-2-3 the data can be recovered and viewed.

[tipsterdad 5]

Thought I would give you all a link some of us at DA use from time to time. This is a nice little site that has not only quite a few links to free software, but a section you can download quite a few different versions of linux, and a tutorial.

 

http://www.ramsinks.com/

Edited March 15, 2008 by tipsterdad

[Schot 407]

Oh nice Tipster. Shiny site with lotsa goodies. Thanks! Checking out the Linux section now. :cha (18):