PLEASE help, partion formatted by mistake 30GB of data are lost

[ramy.m]

Hey all
by mistake i formated my FAT32 partition
sudo mkfs.vfat /dev/sda3 -n Media
and i lost the whole 30GBs of data on that partition, is there anyway to recover it?!
Appreciate your help

[bd54338rre]

as far i know, there ar no recoverytools available for Linux

[leigh123linux]

Try testdisk

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/TestDisk

su
yum install testdisk

[hiberphoptik]

recovering files after a format is not the same as after deletion, both are not easy to do, reminds me of a friend who had to recover an 8MB postgres DB file from a drive and it cost him 3 weeks and $10,000.00 USD to get it professionally recovered

[pwca]

The software (aka "tools" in the trade lingo) you will be using to recover the information is found among Computer Forensics enthusiasts.

There are PLENTY of Open Source solutions available. In fact, most of the best tools available in the Forensics field are FOSS.

The two that end up outperforming the closed source tools most in head-to-head match-ups are:

The Sleuth Kit and The Coroner's Toolkit

Here's just one quick place to go for all the necessary links as well as further general info: http://www.opensourceforensics.org/tools/unix.html

Oh... btw... Do NOT use the hard drive any more until you can use the forensic tools on it. Every time you start up the computer and do things on it you run the risk of writing over the top of the area's where the old files were. Once you've done that it becomes progressively harder to recover.

[ramy.m]

Originally Posted by pwca

The two that end up outperforming the closed source tools most in head-to-head match-ups are:
The Sleuth Kit and The Coroner's Toolkit

Trying ... will let you know how it goes