Short ver.: Any way to recover a deleted directory on a ext3 partition?

Details: Although I've remained subscribed to this list, over the last 6
weeks I've been running a RH 7.2 distro off of my hdb drive. BOO!

Last night, after downloading the new Mandrake 8.2 and burning 3 cds I
installed 8.2 on my hda (sharing with windows). As customary I did a
'clean install' but didn't reformat my /home directory (on hda).

Installation went perfect, everything's configured, the new CUPS not
only recognized my printer (HP Officejet) but recognized and installed
software for the built-in scanner. YAY!

But all my personal files, emails, downloads, tarballs, rpms and other
goodies I've picked up over the last month are over on the hdb /home
directory. 

I had backed up the /etc directory on hda (the old drive with Mandrake
8.1) but didn't backup /home on hdb as I didn't have any intention of
overwriting it, moving it, etc. BAD!

So now happily playing with my new 8.2 I figure I better access all my
/home files on hdb. I modify /etc/fstab to pick up the hdb2 partition
but name it 'rh_one'. I mkdir 'rh_one', do the mount and everything's
there. YAY!

Now things go downhill. I decide I want to rename the dir 'rh_one' to
'rh_home' so I use the mv command. It apparently copies everything from
rh_one to rh_home. I check 'rh_home'. Everything looks OK. I do a 'rmdir
rh_one'. BOO! All the files that were on hdb /home are gone!

I guess if someone could tell me where I went wrong I'd appreciate it.
But the real question is "Can I recover the directory"? I was using the
ext3 journaling filesystem so I would think that there is some
possibility, but frankly don't have a clue on how to proceed.

I've got a backup that's a couple of weeks old and there's nothing
hugely important but it would sure be nice to have those files back.

Can it be done?

TIA.

'/home' less in Cape Cod USA



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