files erased by error

Valkyrie,

There is hope that you can recover them. The degree of success you will have however depends on a few things. The main thing is not to use the laptop until you are ready to recover files. Otherwise, browsing, installing, updating, etc. can overwrite portions or all of the deleted file making it unrecoverable. The other factor is the filesystem type (ext3?) that the deleted files are on.

So the first recommendation is to turn it off, and not to turn it on until you are ready to attempt file recovery.

If the data is very important to you, I would normally recommend you image the hardrive or at a minimum the partition where the files were located. But that is outside of the scope of your question.

On a separate computer, I would download and burn a copy of the Ubuntu LiveCD. If you still have your copy, then that is not required. You will use the LiveCD as a 'rescue disk' to perform the recovery. It will not normally mount your hard drive partitions, but will use your swap partition if it is available.

Assuming you did a default installation, then your filesystem is probably ext3. Using the other computer, read this article, and print it if possible:

    http://linux.sys-con.com/read/117909.htm

This will give you an understanding of what you are attempting to undertake.

The three tools I normally use for file recovery are file carvers. They are called:

    scalpel, photorec, and foremost

If the process described in the article does not provide good results, then I would use the tools I mentioned above.

To break it all down in steps:

1. Turn off affected laptop until ready.
2. Obtain a LiveCD
3. Research and read the article and all three tools I mentioned.
4. Have a USB flash drive handy to transfer any recovered files to.
5. Boot the LiveCD
6. Attempt file recovery using debugfs as described in article
7. If that fails, install using synaptic the tools I mentioned above and attempt data recovery using them. They will be installed to memory or swap, there should be no danger of overwriting deleted files.

That's a long answer to your short question.

Please report back here and let me know if this solves your question, or if you require further information.

Hi Valkyrie,

I'm just checking to see if the information I provided earlier Solved your question.

Thanks,

Harvey