From owner-freebsd-questions@FreeBSD.ORG Wed Aug 16 16:21:50 2006 Return-Path: X-Original-To: freebsd-questions@FreeBSD.org Delivered-To: freebsd-questions@FreeBSD.org Received: from mx1.FreeBSD.org (mx1.freebsd.org [216.136.204.125]) by hub.freebsd.org (Postfix) with ESMTP id DF73D16A4E1 for ; Wed, 16 Aug 2006 16:21:50 +0000 (UTC) (envelope-from mwcmark@yahoo.com) Received: from web38708.mail.mud.yahoo.com (web38708.mail.mud.yahoo.com [209.191.125.84]) by mx1.FreeBSD.org (Postfix) with SMTP id 72BD343D45 for ; Wed, 16 Aug 2006 16:21:50 +0000 (GMT) (envelope-from mwcmark@yahoo.com) Received: (qmail 10422 invoked by uid 60001); 16 Aug 2006 16:21:49 -0000 DomainKey-Signature: a=rsa-sha1; q=dns; c=nofws; s=s1024; d=yahoo.com; h=Message-ID:Received:Date:From:Subject:To:MIME-Version:Content-Type:Content-Transfer-Encoding; b=J7y4jg89RbQ7BY4o6LRFifznarileqxXQDAP53Uwbz36pvNzVxEfGZRXKl2jX3MXkKmCucbG58Gd/bGWODKefpM+GhiMNTLMuVKnzMNCAtRqcKbtTR3tYjvY70LLwufW6a8G60f7L0abSF6zhi0Q4IYcPbZNx20JMWtfzWqksDY= ; Message-ID: <20060816162149.10420.qmail@web38708.mail.mud.yahoo.com> Received: from [205.167.170.19] by web38708.mail.mud.yahoo.com via HTTP; Wed, 16 Aug 2006 09:21:49 PDT Date: Wed, 16 Aug 2006 09:21:49 -0700 (PDT) From: Mark Manzano To: freebsd-questions@FreeBSD.org MIME-Version: 1.0 X-Mailman-Approved-At: Wed, 16 Aug 2006 16:58:29 +0000 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=iso-8859-1 Content-Transfer-Encoding: 8bit X-Content-Filtered-By: Mailman/MimeDel 2.1.5 Cc: Subject: file restoration X-BeenThere: freebsd-questions@freebsd.org X-Mailman-Version: 2.1.5 Precedence: list List-Id: User questions List-Unsubscribe: , List-Archive: List-Post: List-Help: List-Subscribe: , X-List-Received-Date: Wed, 16 Aug 2006 16:21:51 -0000 Hi, I am using freeBSD Unix and someone deleted a bunch of files from the hard drive. I know when you delete a file from unix, only the pointer or inode is deleted and not the actual file. From a software perspective, the information is probally gone. However on a hardware perspective I believe the data is still there. Are there any tools to retrieve the lost files? This is what I want to do: On the hardware level the hard drive is a physical storage device with little tiny "switches" that flip between 1's and 0's. Those switches stay set to whatever they were set at unless they are set to something else. What I want to attach the hard drive to another computer with a second hard drive in it (a blank one) and boot to a floppy disk. From there, a program or tool will scan all the switches ( 1s and 0s) to try to find patterns that indicate the presence of files. Then copy those files to the blank hard drive. Thank you. --------------------------------- Do you Yahoo!? Get on board. You're invited to try the new Yahoo! Mail Beta.