MX Linux Forum

Morning, on a 500GB drive, I only used so far 36GB. I permanently deleted some files using the root option menu with Dolphin and was unsuccessful using TestDisk, Is there another recommended utility for this system to be able to recover or their just gone forever?

I had some success using ext4magic.
I also tried extundelete.
I was only able to recover about 20% of the deleted files.

nasheayahu wrote: Sun May 11, 2025 7:32 am Morning, on a 500GB drive, I only used so far 36GB. I permanently deleted some files using the root option menu with Dolphin and was unsuccessful using TestDisk, Is there another recommended utility for this system to be able to recover or their just gone forever?

"Never say never", but with that said, these kinds of tools are only 100% successful if the space marked as "free" by a delete option has not been re-used. The longer it takes to discover your mistake, the less chance of full recovery.

If you made backups of the files in the affected partition, or made clones of the partitions or the whole disk, your best bet in recovering your files would be to restore the affected partition/disk. If you haven't made backups on a regular basis, this mistake would be a "wake up" call to initiate regular backups of important data.

Sorry if none of this is helpful.

+1 for bradhamilton, I will only add the more writes you have to the drive after deletion, the lower your chances of recovery.

Photorec just yesterday saved files I was too lazy to backup and deleted with rm -fr %F by mistake.
On an external drive, Xfce.
Got them all back thankfully.

Sorry, no help, just experience.
I've never used recovery programs for "real-life situations," only for testing, and the results were often frustrating.
I use a backup strategy that simply rules out disasters like yours (and many others). Multiple backups on different drives, for example, including regular backups to off-site storage!
My data has survived multiple hardware crashes and other disasters since 1986 (from hard drive failures to fire and floods). If something has value, it should be backed up; the type of backup should be proportionate to its value.

nasheayahu wrote: Sun May 11, 2025 7:32 am Morning, on a 500GB drive, I only used so far 36GB. I permanently deleted some files using the root option menu with Dolphin and was unsuccessful using TestDisk, Is there another recommended utility for this system to be able to recover or their just gone forever?

Hi:
I have had very good experience recovering files after wrongly formatting a partition with data, with this graphical tool R-Linux, it is free to recover linux formats (ext2, 3 and 4).
https://www.r-studio.com/free-linux-rec ... load.shtml, for NTFS there is a paid option.
I hope it will help you

I second r-studio for Linux and I've used it a fair number of times over a number of years to recover data from Linux, Windows and MAC volumes where a license is required for the last 2

For commercial use, they seem to have the fairest pricing and for small time players like myself, their 90 day license is a perfect fit, but I hate their single installation lock-in, where single installation refers to the OS, not the machine. Reinstalling the same OS on the same hardware is seen as a different installation rendering the license void, therefore, it is imperative one has something like timeshift in operation.

This is only here so others in a similar position to myself can be well aware of the pitfalls of their type of licensing. Other vendors allow you to de-license a machine/installation and re-license to another up to a certain number of times within a specified time frame, and some have no de-re-license qty restriction whatsoever, which I think is a much fairer type.

When I first stumbled over this single installation complete rip-off trip hazard around 2016, I flipped them the birdie and used something else for about 6 years, it was never quite as good but I learned a few new tricks with Open Sources packages and went without for another 3 years so they lost in total 9 years of my business, all for the sake of their stupid licensing, which I made sure to tell them of when I returned at the beginning of this year.