Adventures in file restore
Tuesday night I did a horrible, horrible thing, but this story requires an introduction.
A few months ago I got a Toshiba NB205, and it's really great. It's small, has keys that are fun to type on, and gets 9 hours of battery life. It also came with Windows XP, so I was happy not having to deal with Windows Vista.
When I got it, I looked around online to see what the experience was like installing Ubuntu. The results were not so good. The wireless struggled (I think I remember reading that you had to shut it down and start it up from the command line in order for it to work), and the speakers would not work (headphones did, however). All-in-all, I decided to wait for the next version.
Ubuntu 9.10 came out a couple weeks ago, and so I did some more research. Turns out people are having more luck with the new Linux kernel, so I decided to give it a shot. I downloaded the iso Ubuntu Netbook Remix and cleared out my 4gb thumb drive I got from the cluster challenge. I started up USB Startup Disk Creator that comes with Ubuntu, loaded my iso, and hist 'Make Startup Disk.' It said I needed to format my drive. No problem, format away.
About 1 minute later I start thinking that it's taking a while. Also, my external hard drive is clicking, which shouldn't be happening. Then I realize that the selected disk in the window isn't my 4gb drive at all, but instead my 300gb drive.
Uh oh.
I unplugged my external drive's usb cable and tried my best not to panic. Well, I panicked. After calming down, I plugged the drive into my netbook to assess the damage, and it's bad. Nothing is showing up at all. It's gone...all gone. Music, tv shows, school projects, backups from my laptop.
After calming down, I looked into some data recovery methods. This article led me to a tool called Findntfs which was exactly what I needed.
First you run findpart.exe to find information about all connected hard drives. It gave me what the article called where my CHS numbers. I used these numbers as arguments to findntfs.exe. This will generate a text file of every file and directory it can find regardless of whatever partition tables exists (or don't). When you look at this file, it gives a number for each directory. You can use this number as the starting point to recover any file from the drive.
After getting the most important stuff copied to my netbook, I soon realized I didn't have enough space, anywhere, to get everything else. So, I went to Best Buy and bought a 1.5 TB for $107. Came home, did a complete restore, and I am fairly confident that everything made it back alive.
That's how I spent my day off.
Here's a screenshot of the usb program. Right now it's showing the 4gb drive in the box, you can see how it's hard to see that there is more than one option. That being said, I'm still an idiot for not paying closer attention.
From Other
A few months ago I got a Toshiba NB205, and it's really great. It's small, has keys that are fun to type on, and gets 9 hours of battery life. It also came with Windows XP, so I was happy not having to deal with Windows Vista.
When I got it, I looked around online to see what the experience was like installing Ubuntu. The results were not so good. The wireless struggled (I think I remember reading that you had to shut it down and start it up from the command line in order for it to work), and the speakers would not work (headphones did, however). All-in-all, I decided to wait for the next version.
Ubuntu 9.10 came out a couple weeks ago, and so I did some more research. Turns out people are having more luck with the new Linux kernel, so I decided to give it a shot. I downloaded the iso Ubuntu Netbook Remix and cleared out my 4gb thumb drive I got from the cluster challenge. I started up USB Startup Disk Creator that comes with Ubuntu, loaded my iso, and hist 'Make Startup Disk.' It said I needed to format my drive. No problem, format away.
About 1 minute later I start thinking that it's taking a while. Also, my external hard drive is clicking, which shouldn't be happening. Then I realize that the selected disk in the window isn't my 4gb drive at all, but instead my 300gb drive.
Uh oh.
I unplugged my external drive's usb cable and tried my best not to panic. Well, I panicked. After calming down, I plugged the drive into my netbook to assess the damage, and it's bad. Nothing is showing up at all. It's gone...all gone. Music, tv shows, school projects, backups from my laptop.
After calming down, I looked into some data recovery methods. This article led me to a tool called Findntfs which was exactly what I needed.
First you run findpart.exe to find information about all connected hard drives. It gave me what the article called where my CHS numbers. I used these numbers as arguments to findntfs.exe. This will generate a text file of every file and directory it can find regardless of whatever partition tables exists (or don't). When you look at this file, it gives a number for each directory. You can use this number as the starting point to recover any file from the drive.
After getting the most important stuff copied to my netbook, I soon realized I didn't have enough space, anywhere, to get everything else. So, I went to Best Buy and bought a 1.5 TB for $107. Came home, did a complete restore, and I am fairly confident that everything made it back alive.
That's how I spent my day off.
Here's a screenshot of the usb program. Right now it's showing the 4gb drive in the box, you can see how it's hard to see that there is more than one option. That being said, I'm still an idiot for not paying closer attention.
From Other