Repairing ReiserFS

[onggie]

I have a HP Media Vault that was not being used, so I pulled the Hard Drive out to place inside of my desktop. When I booted the machine up Windows prompted me to initialize the disc. I unknowingly hit OK, the drive now shows up as unallocated space in the Windows Storage Manager.

I then proceeded to use Testdisk to recover the drive, however the only time I can get Testdisk to find the files and missing partitions, is if I select "none" for the partition table type. Since I've selected "none" it won't let me write a new table.

Does anyone know how I can recover the files, the file systems it finds is, ReiserFS, Linux Swap 2 and Linux Raid.

[DR-Kiev]

I have a HP Media Vault that was not being used, so I pulled the Hard Drive out to place inside of my desktop. When I booted the machine up Windows prompted me to initialize the disc. I unknowingly hit OK, the drive now shows up as unallocated space in the Windows Storage Manager.

I then proceeded to use Testdisk to recover the drive, however the only time I can get Testdisk to find the files and missing partitions, is if I select "none" for the partition table type. Since I've selected "none" it won't let me write a new table.

Does anyone know how I can recover the files, the file systems it finds is, ReiserFS, Linux Swap 2 and Linux Raid.

Are you need data from it?
If yes there is two way to solve your problem.
Easy but not pretty and pretty but not easy.
Which one you choose?

In any case, get clone your drive and work with image.

[onggie]

Are you need data from it?
If yes there is two way to solve your problem.
Easy but not pretty and pretty but not easy.
Which one you choose?

In any case, get clone your drive and work with image.

Yes I do need the data from the drive, it contains around 500gb of home videos. One way I am assuming is to use a data recovery tool to catch all the files. Which I have looked at this way and I have 2 problems, not all the movie show and they are not named how I named them. They are named FILE_1, FILE_2, etc.

I will attempt to clone the drive overnight, seems like it will take around 10hours as I will be sending the image file from my computer to the server as I don't have any space on my computer. Can you explain what I will be doing one I have an image of the drive?

[DR-Kiev]

Are you need data from it?
If yes there is two way to solve your problem.
Easy but not pretty and pretty but not easy.
Which one you choose?

In any case, get clone your drive and work with image.

Yes I do need the data from the drive, it contains around 500gb of home videos. One way I am assuming is to use a data recovery tool to catch all the files. Which I have looked at this way and I have 2 problems, not all the movie show and they are not named how I named them. They are named FILE_1, FILE_2, etc.

I will attempt to clone the drive overnight, seems like it will take around 10hours as I will be sending the image file from my computer to the server as I don't have any space on my computer. Can you explain what I will be doing one I have an image of the drive?

Pretty way:
Use some small drive , set up it with ReaiserFS like a sample.
Check it with WinHex, for example , you will see how looks like this FS inside. Escpecially notice how arranged few first sectors.
Then initialize this drive like you did before. Explore it again . You will see what has changed ( there is a few changes)
Back it manualy

Easy rude way:
Use search, there is few programms which work with ReiserFS correctly.
Scan you drive and you will get all data with structure. And do not care on windows initialization.

[onggie]

Easy rude way:
Use search, there is few programms which work with ReiserFS correctly.
Scan you drive and you will get all data with structure. And do not care on windows initialization.

Would you be able to elaborate, I am not quite sure what kind of program I am looking for. I did a general search on what software, but when I'm specific with data structure strings, nothing useful shows up. Thanks.

[DR-Kiev]

Would you be able to elaborate, I am not quite sure what kind of program I am looking for. I did a general search on what software, but when I'm specific with data structure strings, nothing useful shows up. Thanks.

http://www.ufsexplorer.com/rdr_reiser.php

[onggie]

Would you be able to elaborate, I am not quite sure what kind of program I am looking for. I did a general search on what software, but when I'm specific with data structure strings, nothing useful shows up. Thanks.

http://www.ufsexplorer.com/rdr_reiser.php

Thanks a lot I actually found a successful solution to retrieving all the data off the drive. I guess it is kind of media vault specific. But the same idea can be used for other drives I would assume.

Here is how I used your instructions with my MV drive in a USB housing connected to a laptop booted from Ubuntu CD:


1. Get an Ubuntu boot CD (I'm using 8.04 beta)
2. Boot from CD into Ubuntu, making sure the MV drive is in a USB housing and already connected to the system
3. System -> Administration -> Software Sources
* Check Community-Maintained Open Source software (universe)
* Click Close
* Click Reload
4. Applications -> Accessories -> Terminal
* Type: sudo apt-get update && sudo apt-get install hexedit
5. Get into hexedit for /dev/sdb
* Type: hexedit /dev/sdb
6. In HexEdit, search for ReIsEr
* Hit the Tab key (Toggles to the ASCII column)
* Hit Ctrl-S (puts you in search mode)
* Type: ReIsEr
* Hit ENTER
7. When you find the line (ex. 1E859830), change the last two digits of the line number to 00 (ex. 1E859800).
8. Convert Hex to Decimal (ex. 512071680)
9. Mount it up (loop0 was already taken on my system, so I moved to loop1)
* Type: sudo losetup -o $[ 512071680 - 65536 ] /dev/loop1 /dev/sdb
* Type: sudo mkdir /mnt/tmp1
* Type: sudo mount -r -t reiserfs /dev/loop1 /mnt/tmp1


You should now be able to see contents on /mnt/tmp1

[billybolt]

linux noob.

i have no idea how to complete #7. changing the last two digits of the line number to 00. Using hexedit, I can't seem to find the command to edit the line number. what am i missing here? do i just need to change the last two digits w/in the hex section, they are already at 00.

7. When you find the line (ex. 1E859830), change the last two digits of the line number to 00 (ex. 1E859800).

[Dmitri]

linux noob.
i have no idea how to complete #7...

If I got your question right, the step you don't understand is jumping up (back) a bit.
And the analysis can be done in Windows, if you're used to it. But mounting (further steps) requires Linux.

This approach will work if the file system on your hard drive has approximately the same amount of damage as on the OP's one, e.g. was also initialized in Windows.