Recovering files from ext2/3

[Robert Nichols]

On 09/20/2014 08:30 PM, jd1008 wrote:
> / posted it to the ext3 maling list (turns out they also know ext4)
> and they admitted about undocumented effects of using the -S
> option, and that one must NEVER use it unless they know the intrinsics
> of the FS so well, that the user knows exactly what effects it will
> have.

Sounds like a pretty useless option, then, and that sort of exchange is
exactly the sort of thing I don't want to get involved in.

Digging down into my hack stack, the next thing I would try is to make
a sparse file of exactly the same size as your partition (you can use
the /truncate/ command to do that), then run /mkfs.ext3/ on that file
and copy the resulting super block, which is the 2nd 1K block in the
file, to your broken filesystem.  Then you could see whether /debugfs/
can make any sense of that filesystem and what /fsck/ might try to do
to restore it.  The first time through, just answer "n" to anything
/fsck/ wants to fix and just get a feeling for the extent of the damage.

-- 
Bob Nichols     "NOSPAM" is really part of my email address.
                 Do NOT delete it.