Arch Linux

Kardell

Member

From: London a new Babylon

Registered: 2007-02-20

Posts: 225

sda disaster by dd command

I recently have overwritten my sda partition with zeros using dd command. Of cource it was bad accident.
No mbr, no partition table and about 1GB from the first partition, because I stopped this command after about 2-3 seconds.
It is 160GB laptop drive.
I could restore erased mbr, but anfortunatelly my mbr backup performed long time ago using the same command is stored on home partition - which has vanished too.
Fortunatelly my linux partitions are far from the drive beginning, so only M$ and its 1st ntfs partition was erased in part.
This hard drive has 3 ntfs partitions, then 2x ext3. 1st one is primary, the others are logical inside extended partition.

Now I'm creating whole 154GB drive backup image by dd, and next try to do something with this.

I was using foremost for a while before, but I don't think so it can recover binary file of mbr backup, because it looks for specific headers of common files.

I heard something about file recovery by lsdel or debugfs.

I can play with gpart and parted and try to catch partitions beginnings and ends.

What about superblock backups on the drive and dumpe2fs?

I have to search more...
Wish me luck dear Arch Linux users and roots!

Last edited by Kardell (2009-04-16 18:12:54)

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"Those who don't know history are doomed to repeat it." Edmund Burke

EVRAMP

Member

From: Czech Republic

Registered: 2008-10-03

Posts: 173

Website

Re: sda disaster by dd command

Good luck and make sure to join The Great Zero Challenge on http://16systems.com/zero.php
Edit: typo

Last edited by EVRAMP (2009-04-16 20:30:20)

Kardell

Member

From: London a new Babylon

Registered: 2007-02-20

Posts: 225

Re: sda disaster by dd command

Good luck and make sure to join The Great Zero Challenge on http://16systems.com/zero.php
Edit: typo

Haha, yes sure.
I call for Special Agents from U.S. Department of Defense - foremost creators.

continuing about the case:

testdisk

is the best in such circumstances.
I haven't written its partition table, but get access to my old mbr-backup.
Play with dd is like with a sword. "Who fight by the sword, die by the sword."

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"Those who don't know history are doomed to repeat it." Edmund Burke

perbh

Member

From: Republic of Texas

Registered: 2005-03-04

Posts: 765

Re: sda disaster by dd command

hey - it's the *nix spirit - "you asked for it; you got it"
as opposed to our 'competitor:
"are you sure?" yes
"really, if you do this you may lose something ... are you still sure?" yes
"I am about to do what you asked - are you still sure?" yes *sigh*
"Ok - but for your convenience it can still be recovered from \blah\blah\blah ..."