good app for recovering deleted files and partitions?

ErnestoRD · June 19, 2011, 3:12am

A friend of mine had inportant files on his windows 7 PC. the pc took a virus, he took it with some “experts” wich happily DELTED the partition and reinstalled W7, and apps, WITHOUT backing up his files. Now he asked me for help.

Ibe faced similar cases before, and on windows ibe used Recuva with mixed resutls, but. Is there an application in linux i can install on my opensuse 11.4 box to do the same task?
Can you guys recommend good linux software (available for suse) that will do this?
I read about “TestDisk”, but ibe never used it.

Thanks

gogalthorp · June 19, 2011, 3:54am

Recovery after over writing is almost impossible. On the other hand if you have a crashed disk testdisk may recover at least some files

john_hudson · June 19, 2011, 9:12am

If there is any chance of rescuing anything SystemRescueCd should do it.

ErnestoRD · June 20, 2011, 3:30am

Thanks for your replies fellas.
I was thinking about trying Testdisk and even sleuthkit + autopsy, but i cant find either of them on software management?
Maybe i need to add aditionar repositories?

DenverD · June 20, 2011, 6:38am

On 06/20/2011 03:36 AM, ErnestoRD wrote:
>
> Maybe i need to add aditionar repositories?

sreach all openSUSE repos here: http://software.opensuse.org/search

you won’t find any pre-packaged for openSUSE…

anyway, how did it work out with the already recommended SystemRescueCd?

–
dd
http://is.gd/bpoMD

ErnestoRD · June 20, 2011, 9:28am

thanks, i havent tried SRCD yet, i plan to download it now, read how to use it, and give it a shot tomorrow.

cepiolidus · June 20, 2011, 9:18pm

I did the same thing to my sisters pc. She had windows vista, and i deleted the partition, created new partitions and installed opensuse 11.3 and windows 7. after installing everything she asked me for her emails from work (outlook files), and I said, “Oh ****”. I was able to recover about 80% of her e-mails. it took weeks to recover them, since its a very slow process, but I did. I used r-studio. I had to use a windows machine since is the only r-studio that I had, but I know they have a linux version. Best recovery software I have ever used!

This is the linux version, I don’t know how good is it, compared to windows!
http://www.r-tt.com/free_linux_recovery/Download.shtml

scottparisi14 · June 21, 2011, 1:25pm

For Linux Recovery I have used a software caled Kernel for Linux for recovering data from linux partitions but it works on Windows platform i.e you have to install the software on windows based system and connect the corrupted drive as an external drive to that system. For full recovery procedure you can read the software manual

djh-novell · June 21, 2011, 2:24pm

scottparisi14 wrote:
> For ‘Linux Recovery’ (http://www.datarecoverylinux.com/) I have used a
> software caled Kernel for Linux for recovering data from linux
> partitions but it works on Windows platform i.e you have to install the
> software on windows based system and connect the corrupted drive as an
> external drive to that system. For full recovery procedure you can read
> the software manual

Excellent! I haven’t laughed so much for ages.

Anybody know if the FSF has any plans to sue these jokers?

DenverD · June 21, 2011, 3:04pm

On 06/21/2011 02:24 PM, Dave Howorth wrote:

> Anybody know if the FSF has any plans to sue these jokers?

i think someone needs to raise it to their attention…you wanna do
that, or should i?

–
DD
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21 June: Sunrise 4:34 AM, Sunset 10:03 PM

martin_helm · June 21, 2011, 3:34pm

DenverD wrote:

> On 06/21/2011 02:24 PM, Dave Howorth wrote:
>
>> Anybody know if the FSF has any plans to sue these jokers?
>
> i think someone needs to raise it to their attention…you wanna do
> that, or should i?
>
I doubt that will help, “kernel” is no trademark und “linux kernel” also not
as far as I can see. Only “Linux” is one, so I think they can call their
software “kernel” if they want. But I can of course be wrong.
By the way the FSF has nothing to do with it the owner of the linux
trademark is the Linux Mark Institute not the FSF.
Hope I did not understand the discussion wrong.

djh-novell · June 21, 2011, 3:49pm

martin_helm wrote:
> DenverD wrote:
>
>> On 06/21/2011 02:24 PM, Dave Howorth wrote:
>>
>>> Anybody know if the FSF has any plans to sue these jokers?
>> i think someone needs to raise it to their attention…you wanna do
>> that, or should i?
>>
> I doubt that will help, “kernel” is no trademark und “linux kernel” also not
> as far as I can see. Only “Linux” is one, so I think they can call their
> software “kernel” if they want. But I can of course be wrong.
> By the way the FSF has nothing to do with it the owner of the linux
> trademark is the Linux Mark Institute not the FSF.
> Hope I did not understand the discussion wrong.

The point is that the code they are using to do any file recovery is
almost certainly kernel code and under the GPL. They are charging for it
and I didn’t see any source on offer.

martin_helm · June 21, 2011, 4:30pm

Dave Howorth wrote:
>
> The point is that the code they are using to do any file recovery is
> almost certainly kernel code and under the GPL. They are charging for it
> and I didn’t see any source on offer.
How do you see that? You cannot I guess, of course you can report that you
suspect it, but nothing will happen?
Of course I don’t want to stop you (I thought it was about the name not the
code), if they abuse the GPL I am all against it, but it will be very
difficult to prove it.

djh-novell · June 21, 2011, 5:12pm

martin_helm wrote:
> Dave Howorth wrote:
>> The point is that the code they are using to do any file recovery is
>> almost certainly kernel code and under the GPL. They are charging for it
>> and I didn’t see any source on offer.
> How do you see that?

Are you aware of any non-GPL implementations of all those filesystems?
And somebody’s gone to all the trouble to build new versions of linux
file repair versions only to run on windows?

Seems like a pretty shaky business idea. If I had a linux filesystem
with a problem, I’d just use the linux repair tools.

Now, take the existing linux filesystem code and repair tools and build
a version under cygwin or something and flog that as snake oil to the
great unwashed … that sounds like a much better business plan!

> You cannot I guess, of course you can report that you
> suspect it, but nothing will happen?
> Of course I don’t want to stop you (I thought it was about the name not the
> code), if they abuse the GPL I am all against it, but it will be very
> difficult to prove it.

Well it would probably require somebody to disassemble some of the code,
or search for some suitable binary pattern. Not me, I’m afraid.

martin_helm · June 21, 2011, 6:11pm

Dave Howorth wrote:
> Are you aware of any non-GPL implementations of all those filesystems?
No, that is not my point.

> Well it would probably require somebody to disassemble some of the code,
> or search for some suitable binary pattern. Not me, I’m afraid.
This is the point. I just think about who will do that, I’ld guess the FSF
will not - you may ask why I think that?
This means you first possibly have to break the law (this will of course
depend on the EULA of the software and the country) to reverse engineer a
proprietary software to probably show that it in turn violates the GPL.
The big question at the end is here - what happens to the person or
organisation who does that and then cannot show without any doubt that it is
based on GPLed code? I do of course not know if that problem applies also to
binary pattern search.
The corresponding page http://www.gnu.org/licenses/gpl-violation.html
does not tell much how someone can find a violation in a legal way or at
all.

Of course as said before no reason not to report what you suspect - I am
just a bit pessimistic.

Free software fights with tied hands (not being able to look into the
suspect source code) against an industry which in turn can look into
everything which is free and open.

DenverD · June 21, 2011, 6:50pm

On 06/21/2011 05:12 PM, Dave Howorth wrote:

> that sounds like a much better business plan!

so good i’d buy a little of their stock…

–
DD
Caveat |
Hardware |
Software
21 June: Sunrise 4:34 AM, Sunset 10:03 PM

martin_helm · June 21, 2011, 7:17pm

DenverD wrote:

> On 06/21/2011 05:12 PM, Dave Howorth wrote:
>
>> that sounds like a much better business plan!
>
> so good i’d buy a little of their stock…
>
Just buy enough to force them opening their source code so that it can be
inspected

DenverD · June 21, 2011, 7:47pm

On 06/21/2011 07:17 PM, martin_helm wrote:

> Just buy enough to force them opening their source code so that it can be
> inspected

btw, i just sent FSF an email asking them to have a look at this
potential license violator…

–
DD
Caveat
Hardware
Software
21 June: Sunrise 4:34 AM, Sunset 10:03 PM

ErnestoRD · June 25, 2011, 9:13am

thanks for your sugestions.
Finally got the computer today, and the problem is worse than i tought. Not only did those “geniuses” formated the drive to reainstall windows, the drive is also damaged! SMART warns of Iminent Failure, and it has a lot of bad sectors.

I installed TestDisk and PhotoRec, and its currently scanning (27 hours to go ) but i allready told my friend (the owner) not to keep too much hope.

user · October 21, 2011, 11:29am

There are many data recovery software are available to recover lost data from deleted partitions.I have used partition data recovery software, which recovered all lost data from my partition This software is specific to Microsoft OS only but, you can connect your Linux partition as a secondary device to recover lost data.This software can also recover bad sectors on hard drive by creating disk images, later from this disk image, it will recover and restores lost data. First, you can download free demo version , which will provide you list of recovered data. If your satisfied with recovery results then you can use full version to save those recovered data.