How to recover files from linux ext4 harddrive

Just rm -rf *'d home/me/ directory... tried extundelete, didn't recover more than 10% of data.. trying scalpel, taking forever..

Anyone know of a sure fire way to recover data from ext4?

Solution 1:

First of all, if the disk contains anything that's important for you, STOP THE RECOVERY ATTEMPTS RIGHT NOW. You should first get another disk and take an image of your drive to that one. Then you can safely try different recovery options with that image. Just trying to recover something from your disk can only lead to further loss!

Then you might like to try already mentioned Testdisk and PhotoRec. Those can recognize and recover all kinds of filetypes from many kinds of filesystems.

Solution 2:

You can also try ext4magic. Is not finished yet, but stable. Works like extundelete. I hope it works better and more thoroughly, but I think it is more difficult to use. At the moment it can only restore files if a copy of the inode in the journal is available. The second stage, similar PhotoRec, but only on the remaining data blocks that could not be restored, is still under development.

http://developer.berlios.de/projects/ext4magic/

robi