Ubuntu 20.04, how to recover data on disk?

P Simdars

11/17/22, 4:50 PM

I saw many different questions about recovery. I was amazed at how many ways things could go bad. I don't know what happened, but I was watching TV on my computer one evening and then the next day it would not boot. Gparted says it is "unallocated". I have done searches to see what is available to recover a drive. There seem to be many available from the search but none seem to exist for Ubuntu 20.04. Gparted? That has an option for attempting to recover but when I hit that it says that I need to have gpart installed. But I can't find what that gpart is to install it. It doesn't seem to exist. So, does anyone know of a current tool that can be used to restore the partition tables or whatever, in order to retrieve the data from my drive? Thank you.

I have downloaded 2 supposedly bootable iso images. One doesn't boot and you can't run anything on it (I think it is for windows although it says it'll do linux partitions). I found one but I sue can't figure out how to find it on the disk. It does boot, but that's about all I can figure out. There is a sort of menu that comes up but nowhere is there the testdisk that it said it included. And every choice you take, it goes into something like terminal mode, just text lines on the screen, and then stops with a "#" cursor. And what do I do with that? Anyone know of nice gui software for data recovery?

0 + 9

data-recovery

Nmath

11/17/22, 4:53 PM

Backups are essential so your best path is to restore from backups. Otherwise you should stop using the disk immediately until you are able to perform a bit-by-bit clone of the drive. You can attempt testdisk or photorec but these are recovery tools for advanced users and they may not find anything and usually can't recover everything even when they are "successful".

P Simdars

11/17/22, 5:21 PM

Yes, I saw Testdisk and downloaded it. It was a bz2 file. So I searched for how to install a bz2 file. No directions I saw matched what was there. They said to extract it and then go to that directory and then look at the "install" instructions. There were none. There was nothing like that in the Readme file either. So I couldn't install it. Yes, backups are best but I'm past that now. I am sure that eventually I can download all the files and movies, and programs that I had but I'd sure prefer something different.

heynnema

11/17/22, 5:37 PM

Is this a dual-boot configuration? If so, can you still boot to Windows? Do you have a Ubuntu Live DVD/USB? Start comments to me with @heynnema or I'll miss them.

P Simdars

11/17/22, 5:47 PM

I mean, no offense, but it's kind of a mess. I found a site that lists a number of programs for recovery. But you can't install them. They even had some that said 'create a bootable CD' with the programs on them. But you go to the link and it isn't there. I did find a deb file, dlownloaded it and had the archive manager 'install'. It said it installed it, but I can't find it to run it. If I go into the 'applications' and put 'testdisk' it lists every file that has that in the name, all the txt files and folders, etc, but none of them is a file you can run. Very frustrating.

heynnema

11/17/22, 7:02 PM

@PSimdars Computer problems can be frustrating. Relax. Start by answering the questions in my last comment. Also edit your question and show me a screenshot of `gparted`. Again... start comments to me with @heynnema or I'll miss them.

guiverc

11/17/22, 10:26 PM

https://help.ubuntu.com/community/DataRecovery (and do not use the disk... any change you make can overwrite data making recovery impossible, or at least less complete (even overwriting metadata which will be done on almost any use of the machine))

P Simdars

11/19/22, 11:54 AM

@heynnema There is no windows instI've been thinking about it. There were problems when I was trying to fomat an external SSD. When I was shutting down, the "files" utility popped up with 3 files. I thought they had to do with the failed formatting of that drive and I deleted them. But I think they are what the system uses to access the file system. The names of those seemed like they were suspect . . like 'scratch'fs, something that made them seem temporary. But I think I removed the ability of my drive to access the files. Make sense?

heynnema

11/19/22, 1:15 PM

@PSimdars Your problem description is all over the place. I'm sorry but I can't help you.

P Simdars

11/20/22, 4:14 PM

@heynnema I don't think so. There seem to be 2 main paths to me. Recover everything on the disk and sort out what it is. Or try to recover those 3 files that I think were the ones that had all the partition and file information. I don't really know how it works but there were 3 files I accidentally erased and I think that may have done it.