Data recovery

Data recovery is a procedure by which computer usrs can recover lost or deleted data using specialized tools. Also, filesystems which have been formatted can be hacked to recover part or the complete file.

Secialized tools exists to recover data for the FAT32, ext2, ext3, etc... file systes.

http://www.guzu.net/linux/e2retrieve.php http://www.stellarinfo.com/linux-data-recovery.htm http://www.dataclinic.co.uk/linux-file-system-native.htm

The typical procedure that these tools follow on an ext2 file system is to identify all free inodes, and then try to get to them, and check if their direct, single-indirect, and double-indirect blocks contain valid pointers to data blocks.

This procedure can recover the file's data if that inode or data blocks have not been used by another file written by the user after the victim file was deleted. However, it can not recover the file name, which must be provided by the user when the revivery is going on. Also, most of the tools available recommend that you operate on un-mounted file systems.