How to recover data from harddrive

perfectpol7 · #1 2nd June 2009, 11:00 AM

How do I recover data from a hard drive that has been install with fedora 10, should I slave it on another fedora pc. I failed to rescue it with Fedora DVD but there is information I need to retrieve from this harddrive. What are the procedures steps to take

sideways · #2 2nd June 2009, 11:17 AM

Can you boot a livecd? If so you should then run 'fdisk -l' (as root) and see if the partition is recognised.

If so, you can try mounting it from the live session and copy files to usb disk.

perfectpol7 · #3 2nd June 2009, 11:33 AM

How exactly or what should i do by booting with a livecd not getting it right here

the results of the fdisk -l code is

Disk /dev/sda:160.0 GB 160041885696 bytes
255 heads, 63 sectors/track, 19457 cylinders
units = cylinders of 16065 * 512 = 8225280 bytes
Disk identifier: 0x0006cd12

Device Boot Start End Block Id System
/dev/sda1 * 1 25 200781 83 Linux
/dev/sda2 26 19457 156087540 8e linux LVM

Disk /dev/sdb: 500.1 GB 500107862016 bytes
255 heads, 63 sectors/track, 60801 cylinders
units = cylinders of 16065 * 512 = 8225280 bytes
Disk identifier: 0x00092b15

Device Boot Start End Block Id System
/dev/sdb1 * 1 60802 488386583+ 8e Linux LVM

Disk /dev/sdc: 500.1 GB 500107862016 bytes
255 heads, 63 sectors/track, 60801 cylinders
units = cylinders of 16065 * 512 = 8225280 bytes
Disk identifier: 0x00081343

Device Boot Start End Block Id System
/dev/sdc1 * 1 60802 488386583+ 8e Linux LVM

Disk /dev/sdd: 500.1 GB 500107862016 bytes
255 heads, 63 sectors/track, 60801 cylinders
units = cylinders of 16065 * 512 = 8225280 bytes
Disk identifier: 0xdd17c7f1

Device Boot Start End Block Id System
/dev/sdd 1 60801 488384001 83 Linux

the external harddrive is /dev/sdd. Need to copy the contents in the /dev/sda1 to the external harddrive

sideways · #4 2nd June 2009, 03:15 PM

Actually, it's probably /dev/sda2 you need to recover from, /dev/sda1 is /boot partition.

Change to root and run vgscan

Code:

su -
vgscan

Because you have LVM partitions on the two 500GB disks (sdb and sdc) you should be careful to identify the correct one on /dev/sda2, you can use vgdisplay to check its size (~160GB).

Assuming it's VolGroup00, then activate with

Code:

vgchange -ay VolGroup00

(If there's a clash of names then you can activate using -u UUID)

Now you should see logical volumes in /dev/VolGroup00/ , you probably want LogVol00 (in Fedora 11 it may be 'lv_root')

Code:

mkdir /mnt/recover
mount /dev/VolGroup00/LogVol00 /mnt/recover

and your files should be accesible in /mnt/recover