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How to restore deleted files and directories in a NTFS partition

Unix & Linux Asked by elcortegano on January 5, 2022

The other day I deleted by mistake all files in a NTFS basic data partition using rm -rf. This partition is separated from Microsoft reserved partition, and EFI system partition among others, so I can boot my PC normally and select different OS at the GRUB2 menu. However, if I select to boot Windows 8.1 (stored in that partition) nothing happens, and the PC reboots.

I guess that partition table is OK, and I presume that it’s possible to recover all files and the structure of directories they belonged to, so I would be able to restore and use that NTFS partition with Windows.

I think I can achieve this using a debugfs-like tool, but since file system is NTFS it seems to not work (I get Bad magic number in superior-block while opening filesystem error).

I also have read about other tools to recover files in NTFS such as photorec, but for what I’ve seen in some tutorials, it justs recovers files, and does not organise them as they were in their original state.

So the first question is: is it possible to recover not only the deleted files, but the structure of directories they had using Linux from a separated partition/disk? If affirmative, how?

Thank you.

One Answer

No, there is no way to get back the file system structure.

Recovery software typically gets the files from low level information on the hard disk. At that level, the data doesn't have the same structure like the common structure which we see in a file explorer.

Answered by Marvin Velasquez on January 5, 2022

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