catastrophic loss of data

[NETTKNUT]

I am operating Slacko Puppy 3.3 on an old P3 machine at 660 Mhz and 500 megs RAM. I was attempting to back up some important data to a CD when the hard disc was partially wiped out. I was in the initial stages of trying to set up the puppy utility "Pmirror backup a directory" when it started running and file names flew past on my screen. I suspected this was abnormal so switched off my machine. My personal files in root/my-documents are nearly all missing beyond Jan 2012. My e-mails might be missing but I still have to check SeaMonkey. Is there any way I can recover my documents and (recent) e-mails at least? Also some of the puppy files shown on startup (to choose from) are missing, including the one I normally run. This was my first attempt at backing up data on puppy. Any help would be more than welcome.Thanks.

[ardvark]

Hi...

If it was Windows, I would recommend Recuva but perhaps this program might work in Puppy. I can't tell you anything about it because I've never used it. There is a list of additional programs here, although many are for Windows and Mac OS's.

EDIT: Just noticed this program, too.

Regards...

[perdido]

I feel your pain!

You might want to try the puprescue ISO, it was made for recovering windows files but maybe has an undelete for linux, worth a look.

http://www.murga-linux.com/puppy/viewtopic.php?t=69651

Don't boot or use that hard drive for anything until you are done trying to recover files. If you use it before recovering the files, there is a chance some of the deleted stuff will be overwritten.


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[perdido]

Testdisk for ext2 (not ext3 or ext4, you didn't say what yours is)
This is supposed to undelete files

http://www.pcguide.com/vb/showthread.ph ... D-bootable


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[gcmartin]

If its a Linux formated partition, I would consider booting with pfix=fsck, first. You can do this by either booting a Live PUP or by booting your PUP where you hit F2 on boot screen and follow instructions to "puppy pfix=fsck"

Then look to see if your data is intact when you get to a PUP desktop.

If you're still missing data, I would consider use of a tool like testdisk by booting a CD version of modern PUP to attempt recovery.

Hope this helps

[slavvo67]

Your e-mail provider is most likely required to have at least 3 months of your e-mails. If you do not have success, there's a good chance you can obtain them for your Gmail, Ymail or Hotmail e-mails (via Google, Yahoo or MSFT). If it's through GoDaddy or someone else, they probably have them, too.

There's obviously good and bad of knowing this but this is probably one of the good things to know in this instance.

[perdido]

PhotoRec (file undelete utility) and Testdisk thread

http://www.murga-linux.com/puppy/viewtopic.php?t=28453

Links to pet files in thread

https://sites.google.com/site/ieincp/home/all/testdisk


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[perdido]

Here is a current thread in this very forum about a similar issue

http://www.murga-linux.com/puppy/viewtopic.php?t=92885


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[Semme]

Interesting and may be of help >> Bring back deleted files with lsof.

[greengeek]

I was in the initial stages of trying to set up the puppy utility "Pmirror backup a directory" when it started running and file names flew past on my screen.

Could you set up a different machine (with non-critical data) and try the setup of Pmirror again? This might give you some clues about whether Pmirror was deleting those filenames you saw, or relocating them. Possibly those files may still be on disk, but in a directory you would not expect (eg, I can copy files to something like sda2 even if the real sda2 is not mounted - the files don't get lost, just not accessible in the normal place) Maybe Pmirror has moved the files to somewhere like /mnt/sdxxx and the files are still in the filesystem, but just not where you expect??

Also, how is puppy installed? Do you use a savefile? If so, do you have a backup copy of the savefile from previous times?
(I lost heaps of data one time before I realised how important it was to make a copy of the savefile once a month)

[8-bit]

The one time I thought I had lost some files (frugal install), I ran chkdsk on it and some data was returned.
But it was a mess as it was all run together with no indication of what data recovered belonged to what files.
In the end, I ended up restoring from a pupsave backup I had made with a utility called Hot backup.
Also, Hot backup as part of its process does a file system check on the copied pupsave file as well as adding the current date to it.
The date helps in that one can restore the contents to a specific date if you have more than one backup of pupsave.

[starhawk]

The one time I thought I had lost some files (frugal install), I ran chkdsk on it and some data was returned.
But it was a mess as it was all run together with no indication of what data recovered belonged to what files.
In the end, I ended up restoring from a pupsave backup I had made with a utility called Hot backup.
Also, Hot backup as part of its process does a file system check on the copied pupsave file as well as adding the current date to it.
The date helps in that one can restore the contents to a specific date if you have more than one backup of pupsave.

(1) fsck /dev/sda1 (where sda1 is the partition with the bellyache)
(2) fsck -a /dev/sda1 (sda1 as above)
(3) files reappear

...nifty little trick my local Linux Guru told me works great on vfat partitions, but I've yet to need it on an ext# partition so YMMV...

[8-bit]

Thank you for passing that along. It may save a file that I could loose in event of a power failure with my pupsave not getting updated properly.
My best suggestion to anyone working on a long project is to save it often with progressive version numbers. That way, one can fall back to a saved project and not loose it all.

[Fossil]

NETTKNUT, sorry for the loss. Is this a full or frugal install?

My personal files in root/my-documents are nearly all missing beyond Jan 2012.

It would be wise - if you have a frugal install - to keep personal documents and anything else worthy of saving and backing up, in a folder outside the Puppy save file. Then, should the worse case scenario strike and the save file become corrupted, at least all your personal information is safe. It's also easier to maintain a structured personal folder system and back it up. Not a lot of use now, but something to consider for the future.

[8-bit]

I would also suggest saving your important data to an external storage device to cover the possibility of a hard drive crash or failure.

[NETTKNUT]

Thanks for all your help. this is just an update of where I've got to. As my machine has two hard discs I have reinstalled puppy on the second (unaffected) disc. I saw that the puppy utility gparted had an option to attempt to recover lost data. I ran this but it took about 4 hours on my slow 660MHz machine. It found something on two of the three partitions on my suspect disc but it could not read anything. Anyway I've saved them to look at later. Someone mentioned a Puppy backup file, I had not come across this but it would be useful to know the details for future use. The most promising tip was 'Test Disc', which I'll try next,