TestDisk claims to perform the following operations: This software should be used to recover lost partitions, or to make non-bootable disks bootable again. You could consider keeping a CD of one of these in your toolkit to guard against such emergencies. Tip: CGSecurity has a list of live CD images, which includes their utilities, here. Therefore, shutdown that OS immediately, and boot with a live CD or a live USB that does not write to that medium. This means you shouldn’t continue running the OS that is using that partition or medium in read-write mode even applications like a browser caching files, the OS downloading and applying updates in the background, or downloading new files and installing new packages, could cause the space of the deleted file to be overwritten. Thus, when you find that you have accidentally messed up and lost data that you want, you should avoid writing new data to the medium. Now, recovery of the old file becomes very difficult (though not impossible for experts). When a new file is written to the disk, and uses this “available” space, it replaces the previous data with new data. This indicates that the space previously used by the file can be used to store other data - it is now “available” space. When a file is “deleted”, its entry is removed from the table of contents. Only a pointer to the file is deleted as yet, not the data, which remains on the disk.ĭata stored on a medium as files has a “table of contents” indicating the storage location for each file (name) on the drive.

If you have emptied the Recycle Bin, permanently deleted the file using Shift+Delete or an rm command at the command-line, you may think the file is irretrievable - it isn’t. Usually, when we delete a file, it goes to the Trash/Recycle Bin, provided the file is not larger than the bin’s capacity. Reboot the system with a live CD or other live version of Linux running off other media, like a USB thumb drive.ĭon’t attempt to perform a recovery on your own if you are a novice.ĭon’t mount the media that had lost data just yet.ĭownload TestDisk or PhotoRec if not available in the live CD.ĭon’t use any random software that claims to recover data. The don’tsĭon’t write any more data to the device. The following table lists the dos and don’ts that must be followed in case you have lost data (on external media, on the internal hard disk of your laptop, etc).

Using photorec