CentOS - Jun 2006 - If Trying to Recover a Damaged Partition: kbs-CentOS-Extras Has a Tool

Recently (and for ages, I'm sure) folks have suffered partition
destruction and had to try and recover. In the recent thread, the victim
eventually had to resort to Google and fond some package that I can not
remember now.

Well, I was perusing my YumInfo.lst.05, for general info, and I
discovered this (potential) little gem. Thought I would pass it on and
make it "more googleable" by adding a few keywords at the end of this.
Here's the info summary.

Name   : testdisk
Arch   : i386
Version: 6.3
Release: 1.el4.kb
Size   : 480 k
Repo   : kbs-CentOS-Extras
Summary: Tool to check and undelete partition
Description:
 Tool to check and undelete partition. Works with FAT12, FAT16, FAT32,
NTFS, EXT2, EXT3, BeFS, CramFS, HFS, JFS, Linux Raid, Linux Swap,
LVM, LVM2, NSS, ReiserFS, UFS, XFS

I hope it actually "looks for file-system key stuff" instead of just
examining the damaged blocks (often just missing the 0x05 (?) valid
flag). If so, it looks "Mahvelous Dahling!" to me. We just need to get
some time to exercise this, create some test cases and find out how
really good it is. As time permits, I'll do some of that, as I'm
reconfig bunch of stuff all the time and have some old small disks (and
systems to match that I can resurrect... Windows95 from Genuine floppies
anybody?) and the interest. I'll add to this thread as things are
discovered.

Anyone who has done this already, or has firsthand experience, can allow
me to continue my on-going learning of new stuff by reporting on this
package so I don't invest the time to evaluate this properly.

This is just a bunch of searchable words, feel free to augment as
appropriate in your POV.

MBR, master, boot, recover, restore, lost, damaged, unerase.
-- 
Bill
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On Sat, 2006-06-17 at 15:13 -0400, William L. Maltby
wrote:
> Recently (and for ages, I'm sure) folks have suffered partition
> destruction and had to try and recover. In the recent thread, the victim
> eventually had to resort to Google and fond some package that I can not
> remember now.
> 
> Well, I was perusing my YumInfo.lst.05, for general info, and I
> discovered this (potential) little gem. Thought I would pass it on and
> make it "more googleable" by adding a few keywords at the end of
this.
> Here's the info summary.
> 
> Name   : testdisk
> Arch   : i386
> Version: 6.3
> Release: 1.el4.kb
> Size   : 480 k
> Repo   : kbs-CentOS-Extras
> Summary: Tool to check and undelete partition
> Description:
>  Tool to check and undelete partition. Works with FAT12, FAT16, FAT32,
> NTFS, EXT2, EXT3, BeFS, CramFS, HFS, JFS, Linux Raid, Linux Swap,
> LVM, LVM2, NSS, ReiserFS, UFS, XFS
> 
> I hope it actually "looks for file-system key stuff" instead of
just
> examining the damaged blocks (often just missing the 0x05 (?) valid
> flag). If so, it looks "Mahvelous Dahling!" to me. We just need
to get
> some time to exercise this, create some test cases and find out how
> really good it is. As time permits, I'll do some of that, as I'm
> reconfig bunch of stuff all the time and have some old small disks (and
> systems to match that I can resurrect... Windows95 from Genuine floppies
> anybody?) and the interest. I'll add to this thread as things are
> discovered.
> 
> Anyone who has done this already, or has firsthand experience, can allow
> me to continue my on-going learning of new stuff by reporting on this
> package so I don't invest the time to evaluate this properly.
> 
> This is just a bunch of searchable words, feel free to augment as
> appropriate in your POV.
> 
> MBR, master, boot, recover, restore, lost, damaged, unerase.
If this tool does good stuff, post the results here and I will include
testdisk on the CentOS-4.4 Live CD when it is built.

Thanks,
Johnny Hughes
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On 17/06/06, William L. Maltby <BillsCentOS at triad.rr.com>
wrote:
> Name   : testdisk
> Arch   : i386
> Version: 6.3
> Release: 1.el4.kb
> Size   : 480 k
> Repo   : kbs-CentOS-Extras
> Summary: Tool to check and undelete partition
> Description:
>  Tool to check and undelete partition. Works with FAT12, FAT16, FAT32,
> NTFS, EXT2, EXT3, BeFS, CramFS, HFS, JFS, Linux Raid, Linux Swap,
> LVM, LVM2, NSS, ReiserFS, UFS, XFS
>
> MBR, master, boot, recover, restore, lost, damaged, unerase.
FWIW it (and Photorec) got the NTK seal of approval...

http://www.ntk.net/index.cgi?b=02006-06-09&l=116#l

Will.

Johnny Hughes spake the following on 6/17/2006 12:52 PM:
> On Sat, 2006-06-17 at 15:13 -0400, William L. Maltby wrote:
>> Recently (and for ages, I'm sure) folks have suffered partition
>> destruction and had to try and recover. In the recent thread, the
victim
>> eventually had to resort to Google and fond some package that I can not
>> remember now.
>>
>> Well, I was perusing my YumInfo.lst.05, for general info, and I
>> discovered this (potential) little gem. Thought I would pass it on and
>> make it "more googleable" by adding a few keywords at the end
of this.
>> Here's the info summary.
>>
>> Name   : testdisk
>> Arch   : i386
>> Version: 6.3
>> Release: 1.el4.kb
>> Size   : 480 k
>> Repo   : kbs-CentOS-Extras
>> Summary: Tool to check and undelete partition
>> Description:
>>  Tool to check and undelete partition. Works with FAT12, FAT16, FAT32,
>> NTFS, EXT2, EXT3, BeFS, CramFS, HFS, JFS, Linux Raid, Linux Swap,
>> LVM, LVM2, NSS, ReiserFS, UFS, XFS
>>
>> I hope it actually "looks for file-system key stuff" instead
of just
>> examining the damaged blocks (often just missing the 0x05 (?) valid
>> flag). If so, it looks "Mahvelous Dahling!" to me. We just
need to get
>> some time to exercise this, create some test cases and find out how
>> really good it is. As time permits, I'll do some of that, as
I'm
>> reconfig bunch of stuff all the time and have some old small disks (and
>> systems to match that I can resurrect... Windows95 from Genuine
floppies
>> anybody?) and the interest. I'll add to this thread as things are
>> discovered.
>>
>> Anyone who has done this already, or has firsthand experience, can
allow
>> me to continue my on-going learning of new stuff by reporting on this
>> package so I don't invest the time to evaluate this properly.
>>
>> This is just a bunch of searchable words, feel free to augment as
>> appropriate in your POV.
>>
>> MBR, master, boot, recover, restore, lost, damaged, unerase.
> 
> If this tool does good stuff, post the results here and I will include
> testdisk on the CentOS-4.4 Live CD when it is built.
> 
I have used it a time or two, and was fairly impressed. It is a useful tool
and should be in the live CD. It is on many other rescue CD's.

-- 

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