[arch-general] Partition/Data rescue

[Krzysztof Warzecha]

Do not modify data on the disks right now. Make copy with dd (if you
have enough space) and do your work on copies. I assume you turned
DBAN off asap, I also assume DBAN begins overwriting data on disks
from the beginning.

First thing I would try to do is to recover mbrs and partition tables.
It is safe to assume that your disk with 1 partition had partition
that starts at the beginning of the disk. So, create that partition
(with fdisk / sfdisk / cfdisk) on your working image. Do not use
gparted unless you are sure it won't try to be "helpful" and won't
start mkfs right after you created partitions.

Now, if DBAN overwrote only beginning of your partition you should be
able to restore filesystem's superblock, use fsck and read your data
(with broken files in lost+found). I've never done that before, see
[1].

For disk with 6 partitions use testdisk to restore mbr and partition
table. It probably will not detect first partition, but others should
be OK (depends how much DBAN managed to overwrite. I'm afraid with ssd
it may be much). Try to fix first partition with fsck ([1]).

Also, check photorec.

[1] http://linuxexpresso.wordpress.com/2010/03/31/repair-a-broken-ext4-superblock-in-ubuntu/

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Krzysztof Warzecha