If everything was on a LVM first you may be able to recover if nothing has been 
written to the disk.   I am assuming that you do not have your lvm backup files 
/etc/lvm/backup/.  If you did you could use the pvcreate recovery procedure 
there are a couple of different walkthroughs here that may help.  

http://www.novell.com/coolsolutions/appnote/19386.html

The syntax is something like this. 

pvcreate --uuid "cTFy1t-Ux56-rtqw-D477-ZbvE-eJgm-zozjao" --restorefile 
/etc/lvm/backup/<---vg backup---> /dev/sdb

Good luck



On Oct 20, 2010, at 7:32 PM, Andreas Dilger wrote:

> Probably LVM will refuse to create a whole-device PV if there is a partition 
> table. 
> 
> Cheers, Andreas
> 
> On 2010-10-20, at 18:31, Wojciech Turek <[email protected]> wrote:
> 
>> Hi Andres,
>> 
>> If I am going to recreate LVM on the whole device (as it was originaly 
>> created) do I still need to overwrite MBR with zeros prior that? I guess 
>> creation of the LVM will overwrite it but I am asking just to make sure.
>> 
>> Wojciech
>> 
>> On 20 October 2010 18:40, Andreas Dilger <[email protected]> wrote:
>> On 2010-10-20, at 11:36, Wojciech Turek wrote:
>> > Your help is mostly appreciated Andreas. May I ask one more question?
>> > I would like to perform the recovery procedure on the image of the disk (I 
>> > am making it using dd) rather then the physical device. In order to do 
>> > that is it enough to bind the image to the loop device and use that loop 
>> > device as it is was a physical device?
>> 
>> I'm not sure that is 100% safe.  Having an image may result in LVM to create 
>> the LVs with different parameters for some reason.  Instead, I'd keep the 
>> image as backup and do the recovery on the original device.  Also, the 
>> original device is much more likely to run e2fsck faster, which will help 
>> you get any remaining data back more quickly.
>> 
>> > On 20 October 2010 17:41, Andreas Dilger <[email protected]> wrote:
>> > On 2010-10-20, at 10:15, Wojciech Turek <[email protected]> wrote:
>> >> On 20 October 2010 16:32, Andreas Dilger <[email protected]> 
>> >> wrote:
>> >> Right - you need to recreate the LV exactly as it was before. If you 
>> >> created it all at once on the whole LUN then it is likely to be allocated 
>> >> in a linear way. If there are multiple LVs on the same LUN and they were 
>> >> expanded after use the chance of recovering them is very low.
>> >> There was one LVM on that LUN I created it using  following commands:
>> >>
>> >> pvcreate /dev/sdc
>> >> vgcreate ost16vg /dev/sdc
>> >> lvcreate --name ost16v -l 100%VG ost16vg
>> >>
>> >> So in order to recreate that LVM on the formatted LUN i need to repeat 
>> >> above steps, is that right?
>> >
>> > If you know the exact LVM command then you probably don't need findsuper 
>> > at all, since you should get back your original LV. The findsuper tool is 
>> > useful if you don't know the original partition layout.
>> >
>> >> That said, if there were filesystems formatted in each partition, the 
>> >> amount of data loss may be large. You may have some saving grace if the 
>> >> first partitions are very small and fit inside the space previously used 
>> >> by the 400MB journal.
>> >> Unfortunately new partitions use much more space than 400mb
>> >>    8    32 7809904640 sdc
>> >>    8    33   10484719 sdc1
>> >>    8    34    4193280 sdc2
>> >>    8    35    4193280 sdc3
>> >>    8    36    8387584 sdc4
>> >>    8    37 7782640640 sdc5
>> >
>> > The only good news is that the new filesystems will be offset from the 
>> > original filesystem due to the LVM metadata, and you are more likely to 
>> > have newer data away from the start of the filesystem, so there is some 
>> > hope of getting some data back.
>> >
>> >
>> >> On 2010-10-20, at 9:06, Wojciech Turek <[email protected]> wrote:
>> >>
>> >>> Thank you for quick reply.
>> >>> Unfortunately all partitions were formatted with ext3, also I didn't 
>> >>> mention earlier but the OST was placed on the LVM volume which is now 
>> >>> gone as the installation script formatted the physical device. I 
>> >>> understand  that this complicates things even further. In that case i 
>> >>> guess firstly I need to try to recover the LVM information otherwise 
>> >>> fsck will not be able to find anything is that right?
>> >>>
>> >>> Best regards,
>> >>>
>> >>> Wojciech
>> >>>
>> >>> On 20 October 2010 08:46, Andreas Dilger <[email protected]> 
>> >>> wrote:
>> >>> On 2010-10-19, at 17:01, Wojciech Turek wrote:
>> >>> > Due to the locac disk failure in an OSS one of our /scratch OSTs was 
>> >>> > formatted by automatic installation script. This script created 5 
>> >>> > small partitions and 6th partition consisting of the remaining space 
>> >>> > on that OST. Nothing else was written to that device since then. Is 
>> >>> > there a way to recover any data from that OST?
>> >>>
>> >>> Your best bet is to make a full "dd" backup of the OST to a new device 
>> >>> (for safety), first restore the original partition table.  If there was 
>> >>> not originally a partition table, then you can just erase the new 
>> >>> partitions:
>> >>>
>> >>>  dd if=/dev/zero of=/dev/XXX bs=512 count=1
>> >>>
>> >>> Then run e2fsck -fy, followed by "ll_recover_lost_found_objs" (from a 
>> >>> newer lustre RPM, if you don't have it).  It is likely that you will get 
>> >>> some or most of the data back.  This depends heavily on exactly what was 
>> >>> written over the original filesystem.
>> >>>
>> >>> If it was just a new partition table, there should be relatively little 
>> >>> damage (ext3 is very robust this way, and can repair itself so long as 
>> >>> the starting alignment is correct).  If there were filesystems formatted 
>> >>> in each of these partitions, then the amount of data available will be 
>> >>> reduced significantly.
>> >>>
>> >>> Cheers, Andreas
>> >>> --
>> >>> Andreas Dilger
>> >>> Lustre Technical Lead
>> >>> Oracle Corporation Canada Inc.
>> >>>
>> >>>
>> >>
>> >>
>> >>
>> >> --
>> >> Wojciech Turek
>> >>
>> >> Senior System Architect
>> >>
>> >> High Performance Computing Service
>> >> University of Cambridge
>> >> Email: [email protected]
>> >> Tel: (+)44 1223 763517
>> >
>> >
>> >
>> > --
>> > Wojciech Turek
>> >
>> > Senior System Architect
>> >
>> > High Performance Computing Service
>> > University of Cambridge
>> > Email: [email protected]
>> > Tel: (+)44 1223 763517
>> 
>> 
>> Cheers, Andreas
>> --
>> Andreas Dilger
>> Lustre Technical Lead
>> Oracle Corporation Canada Inc.
>> 
>> 
>> 
>> 
>> -- 
>> Wojciech Turek
>> 
>> Senior System Architect
>> 
>> High Performance Computing Service
>> University of Cambridge
>> Email: [email protected]
>> Tel: (+)44 1223 763517 
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