Utility to undelete files from an ext3 or ext4 partition.
extundelete [options] device-file...
extundelete is a utility that can recover deleted files from an ext3 or ext4 partition
extundelete uses the information stored in the partition's journal to attempt to recover a file that has been deleted from the partition.
There is no guarantee that any particular file will be able to be undeleted, so always try to have a good backup system in place, or at least put one in place after recovering your files!
--version
Prints the version number of extundelete.
--help
Print a brief usage summary for extundelete.
Partition name
Name of the partition that has deleted files, such as /dev/sda3.
Could also be the file name of a copy of the partition, such as that made with dd.
--superblock
Prints information about the filesystem from the superblock.
--journal --superblock
Prints information about the journal from the journal's superblock.
--inode #
Prints the information from the inode number of the filesystem given, such as "--inode 2".
--block #
Prints the contents of the block, called as "--block 9652".
--restore-file path/to/deleted/file
Attempts to restore the file which was deleted at the given filename, called as "--restore-file dirname/filename".
--restore-inode #
Used to restore inodes by number, called as "--restore-inode 2569".
Also accepts a list of inodes separated by only commas, such as "--restore-inode 2569,5692,6925".
--restore-files filename
Restores a list of files. First, construct a list of files in the same style as would be
used in the --restore-file option, and save it to the file "filename".
Then, this option may be used to attempt to restore those files with a single call to extundelete.
This form also reduces redundancy from multiple calls parsing the journal multiple times.
--restore-all
Restores all files possible to undelete to their names before deletion, when possible. Other files are restored to a filename like "file.NNNN".
--restore-directory path/of/directory
Restores all files possible to link to specified directory to their names before deletion, when possible.
-j journal_dev
Specifies the device that is the external journal of the file system.
-b block_number
Specifies the block number of the backup superblock to be used when opening the file system.
-B block_size
Specifies the block size of the partition to be used when opening the file system.
--before date
Only restore files deleted before the date specified, which should be in the form of the number of seconds since the UNIX epoch. Use a shell command like
$ date -d "Aug 1 9:02" +%s
to convert a human-readable date to the proper format. The conversion from the number of seconds to a readable format may be found by using either of the following:
$ date -d@1234567890
$ perl -le "print scalar localtime 1234567890"
--after date
Only restore files deleted after the date specified, which should be in the form of the number of seconds since the UNIX epoch.
See the notes for the --before option for more information.
extundelete was written by Nic Case <[email protected]> Copyright (C) 2009, 2012
This manual page was written by Elías Alejandro Año Mendoza <[email protected]>, for the Debian project (and may be used by others).