I, too, very recently lost all the files on a 1000 Gbyte drive, because of a stupid blunder in attempting to format a USB flash drive.
>From this, I learned two things: (1) Even a simple listing of the contents of a drive would be invaluable in attempting to restore the drive from other sources. The list would allow me to see (a) precisely which files were lost, and (b) the directory structure (that is, the categorization), which is complex and is the product of many refinements over a period of several years. Such a list could be generated automatically by a routine called weekly (or better, daily) by cron. And it might be well to keep a a copy of the list on every drive in the machine, or on the drive or another machine. Of course, a CVS, SVN, or Git backup would be still better. (2) It would be well worthwhile to devote whatever desk or table space is required to keep an old "workbench" machine readily available for tasks such formatting flash devices and transferring data to devices such as cell phones, audio recorders, digital cameras, etc. -- most of which require fat-16 or fat-32 formatting and can be difficult to mount. The important thing is to avoid using the "workbench" machine as an archive; important data should be stored elsewhere. Then, whenever a blunder is made and files are deleted or a partition is corrupted, the entire operating system can be reinstalled, with no loss other than the time spent in reinstallation. RLH -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to debian-user-requ...@lists.debian.org with a subject of "unsubscribe". Trouble? Contact listmas...@lists.debian.org Archive: http://lists.debian.org/20120210224932.GA4024@cromwell.tmiaf
