The Linux community are fast realising that losing data is factor that happens no matter how careful you are. And it can happen easily when your upgrading you distro every 6 months. Here are the top 5 opensource linux tools out there to help the Linux community recovery the data they forgot about on t he previous distro.
1. TestDisk-PhotoRec
The most developed data recovery program on Linux, designed to recover lost partition and to make non-booting disks bootable again. Very useful when you accidentally delete when installing the latest distro. Testdisk is now joint with PhotoRec which recovers files from severely damaged or re-formatted media.
2. ntfsundelete
Part of the ntfsprogs; ntfsdelete scans for files located on the delete inodes and lets you extract the files. Even though it is for a Windows system useful for those countless of people that have used knoppix to repair their failed Windows system. Now with an added tool.
3. e2retrieve
A useful tool to help repair and recover data from a ext2 filesystem.
can recover data from a truncated or split ext2 filesystem (in the case of a LVM with a disk that has crashed, for example)
will not write onto the ext2 filesystem it is analysing, therefore it will never increase damages previously caused
recovers directories, directories tree, files, symbolic links and special files with their access rights, owner and modification date
4. Magic Rescue
A program that recovers data by looking at the headers and footers of files but using the "Magic Code". Basically a program that you can specify the headers and footers to scan for RAW data.
5. e2undel
e2undel is an interactive console tool that recovers the data of deleted files on an ext2 file system under Linux. Included is a library that allows to recover deleted files by name.
Conclusion
The Linux data recovery tools have a long way to go if they are to compete with some of the commercial software and even freeware on Windows. However, as we all know Linux started from humble beginings. If they could put all these tools together and add a GUI we would be looking at something very useful indeed. There are many good shareware and freeware programs out there that can help you recover your files.We recommend you test and learn first before you attempt any recovery yourself. As always most important point - Don't save on to the disk you want to recover from!!! If your data is important leave it to the professionals.
