Hard Drive Help

Antar Bolaeisk · 5 Aug 2010 at 12:13

Hello all,

Trying to help a friend get data off their hard-drive but it looks like the entire drive has been wiped (possibly related to the magnet floating around in the case). Are there any Linux (currently using Linux Mint 9) applications I could use in an attempt to recover files from the hard-drive?

Thanks in advance,
Antar.

SMN · 5 Aug 2010 at 13:20

A magnet floating around in the case? :s Can you elaborate?

What do you mean by the entire drive has been wiped? What file system was originally on the hard drive (was it ext2/ext3/ext4/reiserfs etc or was it NTFS (Windows))?

I'll do my best to help

jack.mitchell · 5 Aug 2010 at 14:05

I agree more info is needed. What was the cause of the data loss? If it was a simple partitioning error that it will be a lot easier to recover. However it sounds like an external factor (see random magnet) then it could have mutilated the data on the drive. In Mint what does it say about the drive in GParted or similar disk partitioning program.

Antar Bolaeisk · 5 Aug 2010 at 16:41

jack.mitchell said:
I agree more info is needed. What was the cause of the data loss? If it was a simple partitioning error that it will be a lot easier to recover. However it sounds like an external factor (see random magnet) then it could have mutilated the data on the drive. In Mint what does it say about the drive in GParted or similar disk partitioning program.

It was an NTFS file system (windows xp). The random magnet came from within the laptop, it was behind the screen bezel and served to keep the laptop closed. It's quite strong though and I had difficulty removing it when I stuck it to the filing cabinet for safe keeping. The drive mounted okay in mint, registered the correct drive size, but it's completely empty. I didn't chance moving a file onto the drive as I didn't want to interfere with any files potentially still there. GParted is saying the drive is nearly completely empty with only 100MB in use.

I'm guessing the magnet is the cause of the loss, it seems the most likely but I don't want to rule out a partitioning error either just in case.

SMN · 6 Aug 2010 at 07:13

Hmm.. Can you get me the output of "ls /dev | grep sd"?

If we know what the drive is (sda for example) we can try manually mounting all the partitions in it to see. It sounds like you are mounting the wrong partition on the drive from the sounds of the 100mb.

Try creating a new folder in / called "temporarysd", then go "mount /dev/sda1 /temporarysd" and then "cd /temporarysd" to see whats in there. Keep going until you have gone through all partitions on all the drives (sda, sdb, sdc, etc). This is the long way of doing it but it'll give you your best shot.

Also, how are you mounting it in Mint?