Rescue Lost Partitions Data With GParted 0.8

GParted is a partition manager you can use to resize, copy or move partition without losing your data.

The latest GParted 0.8, released a couple of days ago, adds an option to rescue data from lost partitions: "This new feature uses the gpart command to guess the partition table. Discovered file systems can be mounted read-only so that you can copy data to other media". Bugs fixed in the new version include: fix paste destination partition smaller than source, prevent visual disk display area from disappearing and fix minor cylinder alignment rounding error. A complete changelog can be found HERE.

Install GParted 0.8 in Ubuntu

You can download GParted 0.8.0 .deb files below:

• Ubuntu 10.10 Maverick Meerkat: 32bit | 64bit
• Ubuntu 10.04 Lucid Lynx: 32bit | 64bit

To be able to use the new rescue data for lost partitions feature, you also need a package called "gpart" which is available in the official Ubuntu repositories. Install it by clicking the button below:

(this will only install the gpart dependency, not GParted)

Or open a terminal and type the following:

sudo apt-get install gpart

Gparted is also available as a Live CD. The latest GParted Live 0.8.0-1 stable is based on the Debian Sid repository as of Feb 17, 2011 and you can download it from the GParted website.

Debs thanks to LFFL.org

'Undelete' Files In Linux With Extundelete

extundelete is a Linux utility that can recover deleted files from an ext3 or ext4 partition, which is able to undelete files, as long as the ext3 or ext4 filesystems have an internal journal. External journals are not yet supported.

If you delete a file and want to recover it, do not save any more data to the partition with the deleted file for any reason! Doing so may overwrite your deleted data and sabotage any recovery effort. Typically, background processes will periodically write to disk, so work quickly until the partition is unmounted.

More info on compiling, using and downloading extundelete, on it's website: http://extundelete.sourceforge.net/

You may also want to read about recovering deleted files in Linux with Scapel and Foremost.

Cross-Platform Data Recovery Solution: TestDisk & PhotoRec

If for any reason, you have lost information of any of your disks: either hard drives, memory cards or flash drives, you should try TestDisk & PhotoRec, a free, open source multi-platform application distributed under GNU Public License which is very efficient on retrieving data from those drives.

PhotoRec supports data recovery for the following filesystems:

* FAT,
* NTFS,
* EXT2/EXT3 filesystem
* HFS+


You can download PhotoRec and TestDisk from HERE (packages available for: Windows (9x/NT/XP/2000/2003/Vista), Mac OSX, and Linux).

Ubuntu users just have to run the following command in a terminal:

sudo apt-get install testdisk

The, to run it (still in a terminal):

sudo photorec

PhotoRec works with HardDisks, Cdrom, memory card (Compact Flash, Memory Stick, SecureDigital/SD, SmartMedia, Microdrive, MMC...), USB Memory Drives, DD raw image, EnCase E01 image, and also various portable media players including iPod and various digital cameras.