Accidentally deleting a file is a terrible feeling. Not being able to
boot into Windows and undelete that file makes that even worse.
Fortunately, you can recover deleted files on NTFS hard drives from an
Ubuntu Live CD.
To show this process, we created four files on the desktop of a Windows XP machine, and then deleted them. We then booted up the same machine with the Bootable Ubuntu USB Flash Drive.
Once Ubuntu 9.10 boots up, open a terminal by clicking Applications in the top left of the screen, and then selecting Accessories > Terminal.
To undelete our files, we first need to identify the hard drive that we want to undelete from. In the terminal window, type in:
What you’re looking for is a line that ends with HPSF/NTFS (under the heading System). In our case, the device is “/dev/sda1”. This may be slightly different for you, but it will still begin with /dev/. Note this device name.
If you have more than one hard drive partition formatted as NTFS, then you may be able to identify the correct partition by the size. If you look at the second line of text in the screenshot above, it reads “Disk /dev/sda: 136.4 GB, …” This means that the hard drive that Ubuntu has named /dev/sda is 136.4 GB large. If your hard drives are of different size, then this information can help you track down the right device name to use. Alternatively, you can just try them all, though this can be time consuming for large hard drives.
Now that you know the name Ubuntu has assigned to your hard drive, we’ll scan it to see what files we can uncover.
In the terminal window, type:
The names of files that can recovered show up in the far right column. The percentage in the third column tells us how much of that file can be recovered. Three of the four files that we originally deleted are showing up in this list, even though we shut down the computer right after deleting the four files – so even in ideal cases, your files may not be recoverable.
Nevertheless, we have three files that we can recover – two JPGs and an MPG.
Note: ntfsundelete is immediately available in the Ubuntu 9.10 Live CD. If you are in a different version of Ubuntu, or for some other reason get an error when trying to use ntfsundelete, you can install it by entering “sudo apt-get install ntfsprogs” in a terminal window.
To quickly recover the two JPGs, we will use the * wildcard to recover all of the files that end with .jpg.
In the terminal window, enter
Hopefully you won’t need to use this tip, but if you do, ntfsundelete is a nice command-line utility. It doesn’t have a fancy GUI like many of the similar Windows programs, but it is a powerful tool that can recover your files quickly.
To show this process, we created four files on the desktop of a Windows XP machine, and then deleted them. We then booted up the same machine with the Bootable Ubuntu USB Flash Drive.
Once Ubuntu 9.10 boots up, open a terminal by clicking Applications in the top left of the screen, and then selecting Accessories > Terminal.
To undelete our files, we first need to identify the hard drive that we want to undelete from. In the terminal window, type in:
sudo fdisk –land press enter.
What you’re looking for is a line that ends with HPSF/NTFS (under the heading System). In our case, the device is “/dev/sda1”. This may be slightly different for you, but it will still begin with /dev/. Note this device name.
If you have more than one hard drive partition formatted as NTFS, then you may be able to identify the correct partition by the size. If you look at the second line of text in the screenshot above, it reads “Disk /dev/sda: 136.4 GB, …” This means that the hard drive that Ubuntu has named /dev/sda is 136.4 GB large. If your hard drives are of different size, then this information can help you track down the right device name to use. Alternatively, you can just try them all, though this can be time consuming for large hard drives.
Now that you know the name Ubuntu has assigned to your hard drive, we’ll scan it to see what files we can uncover.
In the terminal window, type:
sudo ntfsundeleteand hit enter. In our case, the command is:
sudo ntfsundelete /dev/sda1
The names of files that can recovered show up in the far right column. The percentage in the third column tells us how much of that file can be recovered. Three of the four files that we originally deleted are showing up in this list, even though we shut down the computer right after deleting the four files – so even in ideal cases, your files may not be recoverable.
Nevertheless, we have three files that we can recover – two JPGs and an MPG.
Note: ntfsundelete is immediately available in the Ubuntu 9.10 Live CD. If you are in a different version of Ubuntu, or for some other reason get an error when trying to use ntfsundelete, you can install it by entering “sudo apt-get install ntfsprogs” in a terminal window.
To quickly recover the two JPGs, we will use the * wildcard to recover all of the files that end with .jpg.
In the terminal window, enter
sudo ntfsundeletewhich is, in our case,–u –m *.jpg
sudo ntfsundelete /dev/sda1 –u –m *.jpg
Hopefully you won’t need to use this tip, but if you do, ntfsundelete is a nice command-line utility. It doesn’t have a fancy GUI like many of the similar Windows programs, but it is a powerful tool that can recover your files quickly.
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