On Fri, 2014-04-04 at 13:46 +0100, G.W. Haywood wrote: > Hi there, > > On Fri, 4 Apr 2014, Leonard Evens wrote: > > > I accidentally chose to expunge a local folder ... > > Ooops. But we've all done things like that. > > You do have regular (at least nightly) backups running, don't you? > > > Is there some way to recover what was in that folder if I don't > > close evolution first?
Thanks for the help, but I didn't have anything in that folder which would merit such extreme measures. I will just live with the loss. > > It probably makes little difference whether or not you close Evolution. > > It matters a lot how badly you want the data back, because it's tricky. > > Bearing in mind that you can read this message on any computer at all, > you may possibly improve your chances if you simply pull out the power > lead that supplies your computer. Now. > > You're reading the rest of this on a friend's computer, or down at the > local library, right? > > Now you need to 'mount' your hard disc (assuming that it is in fact a > hard disc on which your Evolution mail store resides) READ ONLY and do > some work on forensic-style data recovery methods. > > If you think you can wait a while for the data, then you could make an > "image copy" of your hard disc on some other storage medium. I mostly > use another hard disc. You can then carry on using the original disc > in your computer knowing that whatever is recoverable is on the image. > > This kind of data recovery is possible because when you delete data on > a computer, usually all that happens is that a kind of pointer to the > on-disc copy of the data is destroyed -- the data itself is not in > fact destroyed. It's just that the operating system (deliberately) > forgets how to access it. With a good knowledge of an admittedly very > complex data storage system, you have a good chance of recovering the > data almost complete IF THE DATA HAS NOT ALREADY BEEN OVERWRITTEN. > That's why I suggest that if you really do badly want the data back > you should disconnect your computer from the electricity, pronto. > > Not easy to do the recovery, and you might not get every last little > bit of the data, but quite feasible. There are services you can pay > to do it for you. You can probably register on a forum somewhere and > ask questions about it, and people who rebuild ext4 filesystems before > breakfast will be able to answer them. I'm such a person, but I won't > do more than what I've done here without a large payment of money and > you can get enough information elsewhere to do it yourself for free. > > By the way I'm not suggesting that you're using an ext4 filesystem, it > just happens that the last time I recovered some lost data it was on a > Linux box with an ext4 filesystem. Each operating system has a set of > filesystem types which it can use. Windows for example will generally > use NTFS thesedays. > > > I hope there is some place where expunged messages are put. > > There is no such place unless you are doing something funky with your > filesystem -- and from your question I am sure that you are not. > > Finally it may be possible to recover the data even _after_ it's been > overwritten, but then we're into the realms of 'real' forensics such > as used by law enforcement authorities and I feel sure you won't want > to go that far. > > -- > > 73, > Ged. > _______________________________________________ > evolution-list mailing list > [email protected] > To change your list options or unsubscribe, visit ... > https://mail.gnome.org/mailman/listinfo/evolution-list -- Leonard Evens [email protected] Professor Emeritus, Department of Mathematics, Northwestern University _______________________________________________ evolution-list mailing list [email protected] To change your list options or unsubscribe, visit ... https://mail.gnome.org/mailman/listinfo/evolution-list
