recover

Recover is an impressive utility for data recovery purposes, which automates some steps outlined in the Ext2fs-Undeletion how-to guide that helps users in recovering lost files. The console version of the software, Recover, is no longer under active development since bug reports have become rare (thus stable), and there are newer and better file systems that are emerging which make it difficult for developers to enhance it further. However, the developers are still welcoming recommendations from users on how to improve the performance of the software.

If you want to undelete files on a non-ext2 Linux partition, the recommended option is to try the UNIX-way, which offers an effective way of restoring lost files.

Recover automates several steps from the ext2-undeletion how-to guide, including seeking all the deleted inodes on the hard drive with debugfs. Once it indexes all the inodes, Recover will prompt you with some questions about the deleted file, such as hard disk device name, year of deletion, month of deletion, weekday of deletion, first/last possible day of the month, min/max possible file size, min/max possible deletion hour, min/max possible deletion minute, user ID of the deleted file, and a text string the file included (which can be ignored).

If Recover discovers any relevant inodes, it will request a directory name and extract the inodes into the directory. Lastly, it will ask you whether you wish to filter the inodes again (in case of wrong answers).

Even though we hope you will never need to use Recover, it is still recommended to install this software. This is because every time something is written to disk after a file is deleted, there is a high chance it may overwrite the previously deleted file, making it impossible for you to restore it.