[CentOS] Restoring data from disk w/ messed up partition tables

Tue Jun 13 21:09:17 UTC 2006
William L. Maltby <BillsCentOS at triad.rr.com>

On Tue, 2006-06-13 at 20:54 +0000, techlists at comcast.net wrote:
> Unfortunately, I do *not* remember the original partition settings.

In that case, I suggest that you immediately get a full disk image saved
somewhere safe so that you can play with it at your convenience. In the
*IX world, "dd" will do a raw copy for you. There are also some Win*-
based ones (row-something-or-another). Copies to another large HD or to
CD (can be ISO format, but *IX can also write as ext*, tar, cpio onto
the media).

> 
> I was hoping to find a live CD that could fix such disasters (i.e. systemrescueCD, or some such thing). I did find a Windows based program that's supposed to do the trick. The evaluation edition lets you see if it can see your lost data; you have to buy it ($79) to actually be able to recover the data. This was at: 
> 
> http://www.stellarinfo.com/linux-data-recovery.htm
> 
> I'm sure there must be an open source trick somewhere that should work though.

That's probably true. I'm sure that a Guru or two has had to recover and
decided that it was with a program. Start googling for that.

Another possibility: google for the MBR layout. If your loss was just
the flag (IIRC, x'05') indicating a valid partition got stomped, you
might have an easy out yet. Lots can be done with "dd" and a few good
utils. Even if the flag is lost, you might find partition information in
those first (two) blocks on trk0, cyl0.

> 
> Paul
> <snip>
> 

HTH and, need I say it, I wish you lots of luck and good backups in the future.
-- 
Bill
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