Re: [Bug-ddrescue] oops, i recovered right over my good hard drive

[David Favro]

Hi Michael,

You're not completely clear on whether you're trying to recover the
*data* that was on /dev/sdb, or just get back a blank 500GB partition.

The latter is easy, just format a blank filesystem, e.g. using "mke2fs
-j /dev/sdb1".  (I assume you didn't overwrite the partition table since
the command-line you quoted would not do so.)

The former is more difficult, and as already has been noted, you
probably won't recover 100% of what was there.

I would use a tool such as photorec to retrieve the files.  Photorec is
my preferred tool, but you could also try scalpel and perhaps some others.

Good luck,
David

Michael Mullen wrote:
> In desparation, i used ddrescue (successfully!) to save a failed hard
> drive.  Unfortunately, i didn't read the instructions carefully enough.
> The failing HD is 40 GB (/dev/sdc)
> I decided to put the rescued data on 500 GB misc. drive (/dev/sdb)
>
> stupidly, i typed:
> ddrescue -n /dev/sdc1 /dev/sdb1
> Instead of creating an image, like i intended, I just overwrote the
> entire partition on sdb1!  I got the rescued data off that i needed,
> now i need to
> get /dev/sdb1 back because now all the system sees is a 40GB
> partition.  Any ideas?
> thanks