Help needed : how to recover directory tree on hdd from NAS

[sl789]

I had a very unpleasant (to say the least ) event : by mistake I formatted the harddrive with my mp3 and flac files which was in D-link DNS-323).

I've inserted the second drive, but by mistake I formatted harddrive that already was there. So that it just essentially did the exact same partitioning which it was, but obviously all the files and directories are gone.

I scan it with one of the "undelete" tools and discovered a lot of files, but obviously the original names and directories are gone.

Is there any sophisticated way to restore original directories tree, considering the fact that it formatted/partitioned the drive exactly as it was before ?

Any help will be appreciated. I spent many monyhs digitalizing my CDs and I don't want to repeat the process.

Anybody had similar experience and can recommend any tools Windos or Ubuntu ( I have dual boot - Win7 / Ubuntu on my laptop and XP / Ubuntu on my desktop)

Thanks in advance

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[dmarques]

So you had just one drive on your NAS? And then you inserted a new one and formatted the old one?

Did you use that "undelete" app to scan directly the NAS? Or did you remove the drive and scan it?

[sl789]

That's correct. Essentially it formated it to the same partition structure.

I removed drive immediately and used couple of undelete applications which "discovered" a lot of files, but as I mentioned
it's just individual files with no meaningful names at all. Is it some how possible to resotre at least partually the old directory tree ?
I didn't do any operations after I formatted the drive.

Thanks for any advices

[dmarques]

Do you know how to work with an hex editor?
If so, open up the drive and check what File System is it.
That will be your first step.

[sl789]

Hi !

I know this already : it's formatted as ext2 and it was ext2 as well.

Do you mean some other things to check, when you mentioned hex editor.
I have no problem to use it if necesasary

Thanks for your help

[dmarques]

So use a software that supports Ext2 to scan your drive and check the results to see you can get a structure.

[einstein9]

So use a software that supports Ext2 to scan your drive and check the results to see you can get a structure.

like R-Studio for example, download the demo and try

[sl789]

Einstein and Dmarques

Thanks for pointing out on R-studio.
I'll try it today evening

Regards