🚀 go-pugleaf

Nathaniel David Sammons (nate@deepthought.colostate.edu) wrote:
: 
: Someone please help, I just (due to a severe screw-up) lost quite a few
: files which are severely important to me (non-system files)
: 
: is there any way to get them back???
: 
: -nate sammons
:  ns111310@longs.lance.colostate.edu

FAQ candidate.
	
While possible in theory, this is very very difficult to do in practice. 
Because Unix is multitasking, as soon as a file is unlinked (removed) it's 
space is a candidate for the next operation that needs disk.

Also, Unix doesn't just change a single character to show that a file is 
not there, (as DOS does).

In theory if you shutdown the machine fast, reboot off another disk, mount 
the disk where the files were as read only, you can then go groveling through 
the disk sector by sector.  This requires a thorough understanding of the the
file system.  (Think in terms of doing fsck by hand, and you get the idea...)

Unless the file is truly unique. (e.g. Only copy of the USSR phobos probe data
stream) its probably faster to recreate the files than it is to recover them.

This, by the way, is why you make backups (You didn't need to hear that right
now, I'm sure...)  A good backup strategy makes almost all disasters into 
nuisances.

--
=> Sherwood Botsford                   sherwood@space.ualberta.ca <= 
=> University of Alberta         Lab Manager, Space Physics Group <=         
=> tel:403 492-3713                             fax: 403 492-4256 <=