How to Mount external hard drive and Recover files from it?

[linux_boy]

Today, I've downloaded new linuxmint 12 iso and have tried to make a live usb stick to install it to my laptop. I was working with my 500 gb usb external hard drive (which includes aprox. 400 gb data). I connected a 4 gb usb stick to make the bootable usb stick.

Then opened up terminal and typed in the command line "sudo usb-creator-gtk" and then I've pressed erase button mistakenly and seen there was my 500 gb usb hard drive selected and immediately I unplugged my external hard drive (withing 4/5 seconds) from my laptop. I suppose to erase my 4 gb pen drive. But after closing the program when I have tried to check my external hard drive it was not mounted as before and I tried windows 7 to get access to my data into that hard drive and found an error message like "You need to format the disk in drive I: beofe you can use it. Do you want to format it? (Format disk / Cancel)". I pressed cancel then.

Finally, I logged on to my ubuntu and tried gparted to open that external hard drive as a partition. And found there something is missing or damaged. Some info:

Code: Select all

Partition: /dev/sdb1 | File System: unknown | Size: 465.76 GiB | Used: --------- | Unused: --------- | Flags: boot, lba


Partition: unallocated | File System: unallocated | Size: 2.49 MiB | Used: --------- | Unused: --------- | 

Some more info:

Code: Select all

Warning:
Unable to detect file system! Possible reasons are:
-The file system is damaged
-The file system is unknown to GParted
-There is no file system available (unformatted)
-he device entry /dev/sdb1 is missing

Is there any possibilities to make the external hard drive mounted and get those files into it? Or any other solution?

Please help me with this issue. Any body please help. It would be great if anyone can resolve this issue.
Thanks to all!

[remoulder]

Try testdisk

[viking777]

I don't think it has ever been written down, but I am pretty sure there is a rule about computing that goes something like " the speed of operation of any command is inversely proportional to it's safety" So if you ask your computer to connect to forums.linuxmint.com, it will take as long as it feels like, but if you ask it to delete the contents of your external hard drive it will have the job done before you have even had time to change your mind.

I know it sounds a bit like preaching, but it is always best to disconnect any extra external drives before undertaking any operations on the one you 'think' you are using

However this doesn't answer your question, but it might be relevant to the answer that I am going to suggest. The only thing I can think of that might make your drive visible again is 'testdisk' http://www.cgsecurity.org/wiki/TestDisk . Of course you will have to install that onto some sort of medium in order to boot from it and the paragraph above might be relevant there.

Test disk is not the easiest of programs to use so make sure you have a read through the instructions here before you begin http://www.cgsecurity.org/wiki/TestDisk_Step_By_Step

[manselton]

Another tool I've found useful, though it can be very slow, is gpart
$ aptitude show gpart

Package: gpart
New: yes
State: not installed
Version: 0.1h-11
Priority: optional
Section: universe/admin
Maintainer: Ubuntu Developers <ubuntu-devel-discuss@lists.ubuntu.com>
Uncompressed Size: 106 k
Depends: libc6 (>= 2.4)
Conflicts: gpart
Description: Guess PC disk partition table, find lost partitions
Gpart is a tool which tries to guess the primary partition table of a PC-type disk in case the primary partition table in
sector 0 is damaged, incorrect or deleted.

It is also good at finding and listing the types, locations, and sizes of inadvertently-deleted partitions, both primary and
logical. It gives you the information you need to manually re-create them (using fdisk, cfdisk, sfdisk, etc.).

The guessed table can also be written to a file or (if you firmly believe the guessed table is entirely correct) directly to
a disk device.

Currently supported (guessable) filesystem or partition types:

* BeOS filesystem type.
* FreeBSD/NetBSD/386BSD disklabel sub-partitioning scheme used on Intel platforms.
* Linux second extended filesystem.
* MS-DOS FAT12/16/32 "filesystems".
* IBM OS/2 High Performance filesystem.
* Linux LVM physical volumes (LVM by Heinz Mauelshagen).
* Linux swap partitions (versions 0 and 1).
* The Minix operating system filesystem type.
* MS Windows NT/2000 filesystem.
* QNX 4.x filesystem.
* The Reiser filesystem (version 3.5.X, X > 11).
* Sun Solaris on Intel platforms uses a sub-partitioning scheme on PC hard disks similar to the BSD disklabels.
* Silicon Graphics' journalling filesystem for Linux.
Homepage: http://home.pages.de/~michab/gpart/

[manselton]

# aptitude show magicrescue
Package: magicrescue
New: yes
State: not installed
Version: 1.1.8-1
Priority: optional
Section: universe/utils
Maintainer: Ubuntu Developers <ubuntu-devel-discuss@lists.ubuntu.com>
Uncompressed Size: 369 k
Depends: libc6 (>= 2.7), libgdbm3 (>= 1.8.3)
Recommends: libjpeg-progs
Conflicts: magicrescue
Description: recovers files by looking for magic bytes
Magic Rescue scans a block device for file types it knows how to recover and calls an external program to extract them. It
looks at "magic bytes" in file contents, so it can be used both as an undelete utility and for recovering a corrupted drive
or partition. As long as the file data is there, it will find it.
Homepage: http://jbj.rapanden.dk/magicrescue/