[mythtv-users] recovery of files and filenames from ext4 partition

[Hika van den Hoven]

Hoi Mark,

Tuesday, February 3, 2015, 12:24:33 AM, you wrote:

> Hi all, just looking to see if anyone has any specific advice / pointers for
> me.

> Had to do a reboot last night of Mythbackend (Ubuntu 14.04.01). On reboot
> for some reason one of the 2Tb recording drives spat hundreds of SMART
> errors and crashed and the backend didn't restart (Ubuntu didn't boot). It
> took a little while before I realised things weren't coming back (was doing
> this on essentially headless BE) but once I realised 'all is not well' and
> got a monitor on it there was just a screen full of text errors.

> Rebooted, and got the standard Ubuntu file system check which I let do it
> its thing (bad idea but too late now) and everything came back up normally -
> except the one recording drive has no files. It is correctly partitioned
> (ext4) but is file-less / directory-less. No backups (it's just TV). Gparted
> is showing the correct % full but there are no files / directories listed.

> What are the suggestions for recovering files. The drive is a wreck, SMART
> is showing it is a failure in progress (plus it 'squeals' now) but *for now*
> it is working.

> Essentially I have imaged the failed drive to image file on NAS (gddrescue).
> Then tried recovery with foremost but it didn't find anything. Trying now
> with photorec which appears to be working well - except it does not recover
> file names which renders the recordings as useless until filenames are
> manually corrected, not sure I can be bothered with that.

> I'm not happy about it but life is like that. I'm certainly not unhappy
> enough to spend the money on backups (it's just TV). Just wondered if there
> were any other steps that others would recommended in this situation. In
> particular - a file recovery program that would recover files + filenames on
> an ext4 partition?

> Thanks in advance!

> _______________________________________________

You can try if ext4magic can recover something from your journal. It's
a good program, but it looks like the holes fell right in the journal.

Also if you have an equal drive, you could try switching the boards.
If it went so fast I think it more likely the problem is in the
electronics and not in the disks. (Unless off cause you played
volleybal with the disk ;) ) Unluckily you let a dumb automated
process run over it, which makes the chances slimmer.


Tot mails,
  Hika                            mailto:hikavdh at gmail.com

"Zonder hoop kun je niet leven
Zonder leven is er geen hoop
Het eeuwige dilemma
Zeker als je hoop moet vernietigen om te kunnen overleven!"

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