[ale] Stupid data recovery question for file system gurus

[mike at trausch.us]

On 03/14/2012 02:37 PM, Rich Faulkner wrote:
> Scenario:  Single bootable and healthy Windows NTFS partition is
> overwritten with ext4 and Linux system in simple scheme of / and swap
> (using entire disk).  Is there "any" way of restoring old (Windows) data
> from the now reformatted disk?  (Freeware or otherwise)

Definitely image the drive, and then scan it.

There are some good tools out there; one that I have used in the past
was actually written by the USAF, called foremost.  There is also a
program called photorec that does similar things, but is better suited
to different types of files than foremost (as can probably be figured by
the name).

Always do your scanning on the image, though, and don't expect to be
able to recover everything -- the mere act of creating a new
(incompatible) filesystem over top of another one can destroy lots of
data.  I would not be surprised if you get no or little data.

	--- Mike

-- 
A man who reasons deliberately, manages it better after studying Logic
than he could before, if he is sincere about it and has common sense.
                                   --- Carveth Read, “Logic”

-------------- next part --------------
A non-text attachment was scrubbed...
Name: signature.asc
Type: application/pgp-signature
Size: 729 bytes
Desc: OpenPGP digital signature
Url : http://mail.ale.org/pipermail/ale/attachments/20120316/30cfdf94/attachment.bin