file restoration

[Martin Tournoij]

On Wed, 16 Aug 2006 18:21:49 +0200, Mark Manzano <mwcmark at yahoo.com> wrote:

> 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.
>
>  		

There are several commercial tools that can restore file on a UFS  
partition, I'm not aware of any free tools

I used Stellar Phoenix (sucsesfully) a while ago after a windows crash  
destoyed my part of my UFS partition (grmbl!)
http://www.stellarinfo.com/disk-recovery.htm#bsd

Not cheap though, $355, I don't want to encourage illegal software use,  
but I managed to find a cracked version on the web...

There are several others on the web, Use google.