1 Topic by cris

  • cris
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Topic: I can't see my files after a partition copy

Hi!

First of all, congratulations to development team and all the people who works on this project, for the great work on gparted.

Have been using GParted at ubuntu and GParted Live media for some time, but yesterday was using GParted Live media to perform a partition backup, and had a troubled, about what I'm here for asking your help.

Was copying (using Gparted copy and paste) a 90GB ext3 partition from sda to sdb, both SATA HDs. Partition was about 60GB used.

Had apparently no trouble as power off, but at process end, both partitions, on sda and sdb, show just 1,48GB used (using gparted), and using Nautilus Ubuntu, just appear that "lost+found" folder and no more files.

So, I ask you:

1) any idea on what could have happened to cause the trouble described?

2) thinking about buying (an expensive) data recovery service. Any suggestions on what I could try to recover lost data before that?

Thanks in advance for your attention and opinion.

Cristina

2 Reply by class413

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Re: I can't see my files after a partition copy

It seems that a better tool to copy partitions is the gparted-clonezilla liveCD.

Which liveCD version did you use?

*** It is highly recommended to backup any important files before doing resize/move operations. ***

3 Reply by cris

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Re: I can't see my files after a partition copy

Thanks for the answer!

I

4 Reply by class413 (edited by class413 2007-07-03 20:21:21)

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Re: I can't see my files after a partition copy

There is something perhaps useful for this situation:

http://www.oreilly.com/catalog/morelnxs … hack96.pdf

About gparted versions: last version is 0.3.4-8.

*** It is highly recommended to backup any important files before doing resize/move operations. ***

5 Reply by cris

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Re: I can't see my files after a partition copy

Thanks for the hint!

I'll study that, since photorec development team is doing a great work, but on this case that`s not the right solution.

Because there's a great number of files to recover (so to rename each one of them would be a huge work), and some of them are very important and have a format not supported by photorec.

6 Reply by class413

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Re: I can't see my files after a partition copy

I wonder how it happened with the live cd. Perhaps something went bad in writing the MBR? It would be possible with the second disk, with the copy-partition. But why in the "original" disk?  Did you think about partition table recovery in the first disk?

*** It is highly recommended to backup any important files before doing resize/move operations. ***

7 Reply by cris

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Re: I can't see my files after a partition copy

@ class413: Thanks for all the help!

Reading the material you've linked, tend to think:

1) for some reason, it has occurred same trouble on both partitions on gparted operation;

2) fsck had same work on both HDs and partitions, resulting in same "lost+found" folder and no more files.

8 Reply by class413

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Re: I can't see my files after a partition copy

I think that "lost+found" stories occur after something like power failures and filesystem check after reboot next time. Do you mean that both partitions had the same lost+found folder with the same files, and this without rebooting the system?

In any case, the most sure version of gparted is the latest in the gparted site. There are often older versions in various rescue tools, but as we know, hardware and software move all the time, never stay for long.

*** It is highly recommended to backup any important files before doing resize/move operations. ***

9 Reply by cris (edited by cris 2007-07-04 18:20:04)

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Re: I can't see my files after a partition copy

Surely!

It has occurred after a reboot and same fsck "repair" on both disks.

About gparted, it is a great tool and my fault not backup partition (or at least more crucial files) before perform the operation.

Anyway, now I need to recover all the stuff.

Not the forum scope, but does anyone have some experience with a tool, even not free software, or even win tool, able to recover ext3 partition files, including file names and folder structure, and even not more common formats?

As I told, photorec is a great FS tool, but not the appropriate one for this case.