Testdisk Photorec and recovering deleted files

[VastOne]

I want to relate a little story that will detail a gotcha, an OH FUCK, and some new info I have gleaned on recovering deleted files

1 - What happened

As most of you know I use grsync, a gui front end for rsync.. I swear by it.. I don't use it that often anymore (use ftp just as easily between systems and smart phone).. lately though I had been building up a nice supply of mp3's from one system using Pithos Fly (standard on VSIDO)

So I setup grsync to transfer a shit ton of new mp3's to this my main multimedia server.. I simply created a new one and this is what it looks like


 

See that one little area that says  Delete on destination?  When I reversed this and created it new, by default this is set to ON (checked) .. Why? Idiotic IMO to have something setup so dangerous that does not say 'ARE YOU SURE YOU WANT THIS?'.. But I missed it.. and you can guess what happens

Anyway, enough bitching about grsync, I still love it but the point of the above is.. be careful... When I set the reverse (this server and my main mp3 loacation) once I executed it started deleting files.. I noticed it right away and killed it but within 3 seconds 2000 files had been deleted

That's the gotcha and OH FUCK moment...

2 - Recovery .. I did some research and found out about testdisk which includes the app photorec.. I booted the VSIDO LiveCD.. installed test disk, and mounted a recovery location (Very important because you don't have enough room with the 1 gig in the liveCD session)

I basically followed the instructions from this site, selected mp3 as the targeted files and restored 4500 of them to the designated mounted recovery location (another partition).. I then used Puddletag to re-tag the files (the files are restored in a numeric naming convention based on the file structure they are found on)...

Did I get back the exact same thing? No.. but I did learn some new things, and did locate the files and restore them.. just not in the same directory structure..

It was an interesting learning experience.. and this bastardized How To just might help some folks down the road

Enjoy.. 

[Snap]

Huh, I feel your pain.

I went through a very similar situation a couple of times in the past. But i didn't noticed a mass of files being deleted too soon (both times, silly me...) I managed to recover gazillions of files but just numbered randomly(?) It was a real pita going through them one by one trying to figure out what's what, remaming and relocating them where they belonged. Of course I never finished it and lost so many things.  Backups are great. We need backups and sync, but beware of of backup and syncing tools. One mistake and they can hurt badly. They're true cousins of rm -rf.