ntfsundelete
recover a deleted file from an NTFS volume.
see also :
ntfsinfo
Synopsis
ntfsundelete
[options] device
add an example, a script, a trick and tips
examples
Look for deleted files on /dev/hda1.
ntfsundelete /dev/hda1
Look for deleted documents on /dev/hda1.
ntfsundelete /dev/hda1 -s -m ’*.doc’
Look for deleted files between 5000 and 6000000 bytes, with at
least 90% of the data recoverable, on /dev/hda1.
ntfsundelete /dev/hda1 -S 5k-6m -p 90
Look for deleted files altered in the last two days
ntfsundelete /dev/hda1 -t 2d
Undelete inodes 2, 5 and 100 to 131 of device /dev/sda1
ntfsundelete /dev/sda1 -u -i 2,5,100-131
Undelete inode number 3689, call the file ’work.doc’ and put it
in the user’s home directory.
ntfsundelete /dev/hda1 -u -i 3689 -o work.doc -d ~
Save MFT Records 3689 to 3690 to a file ’debug’
ntfsundelete /dev/hda1 -c 3689-3690 -o debug
source
sbin/ntfslabel \
sbin/ntfsresize \
sbin/ntfsundelete \
usr/bin/ntfsdecrypt; \
do \
chrpath --delete debian/tmp/$${_PROGRAM}; \
description
ntfsundelete
has three modes of operation: scan, undelete
and copy.
Scan
The default mode, scan simply reads an NTFS Volume
and looks for files that have been deleted. Then it will
print a list giving the inode number, name and size.
Undelete
The undelete mode takes the files either matching the
regular expression (option -m) or specified by the
inode-expressions and recovers as much of the data as
possible. It saves the result to another location. Partly
for safety, but mostly because NTFS write support
isn’t finished.
Copy
This is a wizard’s option. It will save a portion of
the MFT to a file. This probably only be useful when
debugging ntfsundelete
Notes
ntfsundelete only ever reads from the NTFS
Volume. ntfsundelete will never change the
volume.
options
Below is a
summary of all the options that ntfsundelete accepts.
Nearly all options have two equivalent names. The short name
is preceded by - and the long name is preceded
by --. Any single letter options, that
don’t take an argument, can be combined into a single
command, e.g. -fv is equivalent to -f
-v. Long named options can be abbreviated to any
unique prefix of their name.
-b, --byte NUM
If any clusters of the file
cannot be recovered, the missing parts will be filled with
this byte. The default is zeros.
-C,
--case
When scanning an NTFS volume,
any filename matching (using the --match
option) is case-insensitive. This option makes the
matching case-sensitive.
-c,
--copy RANGE
This wizard’s option will
write a block of MFT FILE records to a file. The default
file is mft which will be created in the current
directory. This option can be combined with the
--output and
--destination options.
-d,
--destination DIR
This option controls where to
put the output file of the --undelete and
--copy options.
-f,
--force
This will override some
sensible defaults, such as not overwriting an existing file.
Use this option with caution.
-h,
--help
Show a list of options with a
brief description of each one.
-i,
--inodes RANGE
Recover the files with these
inode numbers. RANGE can be a single inode number,
several numbers separated by commas "," or a range
separated by a dash "-".
-m,
--match PATTERN
Filter the output by only
looking for matching filenames. The pattern can include the
wildcards ’?’, match exactly one character or
’*’, match zero or more characters. By default
the matching is case-insensitive. To make the search
case sensitive, use the --case
option.
-O,
--optimistic
Recover parts of the file even
if they are currently marked as in use.
-o,
--output FILE
Use this option to set name of
output file that --undelete or
--copy will create.
-P,
--parent
Display the parent directory of
a deleted file.
-p,
--percentage NUM
Filter the output of the
--scan option, by only matching files
with a certain amount of recoverable content. Please read
the caveats section for more details.
-q,
--quiet
Reduce the amount of output to
a minimum. Naturally, it doesn’t make sense to combine
this option with --scan.
-s,
--scan
Search through an NTFS volume
and print a list of files that could be recovered. This is
the default action of ntfsundelete. This list can be
filtered by filename, size, percentage recoverable or last
modification time, using the --match,
--size, --percent and
--time options, respectively.
The output of
scan will be:
Inode Flags
%age Date Size Filename
6038 FN.. 93% 2002-07-17 26629 thesis.doc
The percentage field shows how
much of the file can potentially be recovered.
-S,
--size RANGE
Filter the output of the
--scan option, by looking for a
particular range of file sizes. The range may be specified
as two numbers separated by a ’-’. The
sizes may be abbreviated using the suffixes k, m, g, t, for
kilobytes, megabytes, gigabytes and terabytes
respectively.
-t,
--time SINCE
Filter the output of the
--scan option. Only match files that have
been altered since this time. The time must be given as
number using a suffix of d, w, m, y for days, weeks, months
or years ago.
-T,
--truncate
If ntfsundelete is
confident about the size of a deleted file, then it will
restore the file to exactly that size. The default behaviour
is to round up the size to the nearest cluster (which will
be a multiple of 512 bytes).
-u,
--undelete
Select undelete mode.
You can specify the files to be recovered using by using
--match or --inodes
options. This option can be combined with
--output,
--destination, and
--byte.
When the file
is recovered it will be given its original name, unless the
--output option is used.
-v,
--verbose
Increase the amount of output
that ntfsundelete prints.
-V,
--version
Show the version number,
copyright and license for ntfsundelete.
availability
ntfsundelete is part of the ntfs-3g package and is
available from:
http://www.tuxera.com/community/
caveats
Miracles
ntfsundelete cannot perform the impossible.
When a file is deleted the MFT Record is marked as not in use and
the bitmap representing the disk usage is updated. If the power
isn’t turned off immediately, the free space, where the file used
to live, may become overwritten. Worse, the MFT Record may be
reused for another file. If this happens it is impossible to tell
where the file was on disk.
Even if all the clusters of a file are not in use, there is no
guarantee that they haven’t been overwritten by some short-lived
file.
Locale
In NTFS all the filenames are stored as Unicode. They will be
converted into the current locale for display by
ntfsundelete. The utility has successfully displayed some
Chinese pictogram filenames and then correctly recovered them.
Extended MFT Records
In rare circumstances, a single MFT Record will not be large
enough to hold the metadata describing a file (a file would have
to be in hundreds of fragments for this to happen). In these
cases one MFT record may hold the filename, but another will hold
the information about the data. ntfsundelete will not try
and piece together such records. It will simply show unnamed
files with data.
Compressed and Encrypted Files
ntfsundelete cannot recover compressed or encrypted files.
When scanning for them, it will display as being 0% recoverable.
The Recovered File’s Size and Date
To recover a file ntfsundelete has to read the file’s
metadata. Unfortunately, this isn’t always intact. When a file is
deleted, the metadata can be left in an inconsistent state. e.g.
the file size may be zero; the dates of the file may be set to
the time it was deleted, or random.
To be safe ntfsundelete will pick the largest file size it
finds and write that to disk. It will also try and set the file’s
date to the last modified date. This date may be the correct last
modified date, or something unexpected.
bugs
There are some
small limitations to ntfsundelete, but currently no
known bugs. If you find a bug please send an email
describing the problem to the development team:
ntfs-3g-devel[:at:]lists.sf[:dot:]net
see also
ntfsinfo ,
ntfsprogs
authors
ntfsundelete
was written by Richard Russon and Holger Ohmacht, with
contributions from Anton Altaparmakov. It was ported to
ntfs-3g by Erik Larsson and Jean-Pierre Andre.