Data recovery using Photorec
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Photorec is a free software tool capable of recovering data even when files have been erased or drives formatted. It works by ignoring the file system and searches for known file headers in the underlying data. It will recover many types of files but cannot recover file names. To run it simply type
sudo photorec
into a terminal and follow the prompts. Make sure you store the recovered data in its own directory on a different partition/hard drive. N.B. It can take up to a week to complete it's task depending on the size of the drive etc. You should be able to select file types though we normally recover everything and deal with it later.
Thumbnails found inside pictures are saved as t*.jpg If you have chosen to keep corrupted files/file fragments, their filenames will beginning by the letter b(roken).
Once it has recovered the data you will be left with a variety of files in side different folders. There is a script called
data-sort
that will sort these by file extension. You can then use this to narrow the files down to the more useful ones. For instance it will often recover ELF which are not needed, where as jpegs most certainly are.