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I desperately need some help regarding problem I am facing now. While creating a softlink for a very important file I gave the reverse command by mistake. Instead of giving it "ln target linkname" I have given it 'ln linkname target'. This has resulted in references pointing to target files are now pointing to links and the actual refernces to target files are lost. How can I recover the files back.

"/home/user/data1" was original file location. "/home/user/db2" was the desired softlink for this data.

I haveto give "ln data1 db2" but I have given 'ln db2 data1'.

This has resulted in 'data1' being now pointing towards 'db2' and the actual data in 'data1' can not be retrieved.

Some one please help.

Thanks in advance.

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migrated from stackoverflow.com Feb 5 '10 at 11:10

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4 Answers

up vote 9 down vote

Whatever you do, remount that partition read-only, right now. Other writes to the disk might well overwrite your precious file.

After that, try some recovery tools from the other answers.

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furthermore: make first a backup copy of that partition. and then a backup of that backup. and then only work on that backup and let the original data alone. – akira Feb 5 '10 at 11:55
I wish I could upvote this more than once – Nifle Feb 5 '10 at 23:18
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up vote 2 down vote

You might try using TestDisk:

TestDisk can

  • Undelete files from FAT, NTFS and ext2 filesystem
  • Copy files from deleted FAT, NTFS and ext2/ext3 partitions.

and maybe you will be in luck...

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up vote 0 down vote

What filesystem are you using? if EXT3 or EXT4 there is no way (at least i have this info) to restore those files.

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Yes I am using Ext 3 – Ashine Feb 5 '10 at 9:59
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up vote 0 down vote

Get SystemRescueCd live CD and do the rescue using this live linux. It contains most of the useful tools.

"Magic Rescue" is another tool.

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