Best alternatives to recover lost directories in FAT32 external hard drive?

Posted by Sergio on Super User See other posts from Super User or by Sergio
Published on 2010-03-24T14:29:05Z Indexed on 2012/11/30 17:08 UTC
Read the original article Hit count: 209

Filed under:

filesystems

|

data-recovery

|

fat32

I have an 320 GB ADATA CH91 external hard drive. I guess it has some problems with the connector of the USB jack. The point is that in certain occasions it fails in write operations generating data losses. Right now I lost a directory with several GB's of very useful information. Since then I have not attempted to write to the disk any more.

What tool would you recommend to recover the lost data? The disk is FAT32 formatted (only one partition) and I use both Linux and Windows.
What filesystem format would you recommend to avoid future data losses? I currently only use this external hard drive in Linux so there are several available choices (FAT, NTFS, ext3, ext4, reiser, etc.).

© Super User or respective owner

Related posts about filesystems

Question regarding filesystems true or false?

as seen on Super User - Search for 'Super User'
Hello all, though I'm familiar with stackoverflow , and loving it , i've actually got a couple of questions myself about something other then programming. Here are my question Is it true that in FAT filesystems the maximum number of files per filesystem equals the number of entries in the FAT table… >>> More
Filesystems for webserver with SATA and Solid State disk,

as seen on Server Fault - Search for 'Server Fault'
We have just ordered a new webserver with 120 Gb solid state disk and a SATA disk. I am trying to plan ahead what sort of filesystem to use. This system will be running Linux, Apache/Tomcat to host java services. The main service is a system where people can upload reasonably large files (in the… >>> More
To see virtual filesystems in Ubuntu

as seen on Super User - Search for 'Super User'
How can you see the virtual filesystems at root? They should be /proc and /dev. >>> More
How do filesystems handle concurrent read/write?

as seen on Stack Overflow - Search for 'Stack Overflow'
User A asks the system to read file foo and at the same time user B wants to save his or her data onto the same file. How is this situation handled on the filesystem level? >>> More
Strange ZFS hidden filesystem problem

as seen on Server Fault - Search for 'Server Fault'
Half of my ZFS filesystems are hidden in ZFS-fuse. Here's my story: So, I love ZFS. I used it for about six months on FreeBSD, but due to it crashing the kernel during heavy inter-filesystem IO load, I tried switching to Solaris 5.10. That was good, but when I attempted to do an import of my Version… >>> More

Related posts about data-recovery

data recovery from deleted partition

as seen on Super User - Search for 'Super User'
i recently merged my hard disk partitions f into c using a partition manager, i didnt need data in f but unfortunately i forgot to backup some important office docs in that partition. manager formated f and merged the space into c. is it possible for me to recover from a deleted partition, how will… >>> More
Data Recovery from Tru64 Unix..

as seen on Server Fault - Search for 'Server Fault'
Hi I accidently deleted a directory in Tru64 unix Server. Is it possible to retrieve back the directory.. It contained many other directories and Anyhow I need to retrieve the data as it was a very important directory.. Kindly let me know the process or some good website which details about the… >>> More
Verizon, IBM Take Data Recovery to the Cloud

as seen on Internet.com - Search for 'Internet.com'
Verizon and IBM want to give enterprise customers a cloud-based option for backing up and recovering massive data reservoirs. >>> More
The Basics of Desktop Data Recovery

as seen on Article City - Search for 'Article City'
Desktop data recovery is an important part of computer repairs, as it is pretty common for a hard drive or server RAID to fail and lose major amounts of data. With desktops especially, it is sometime... [Author: Richard Cuthbertson - Computers and Internet - April 07, 2010] >>> More
Uses for Types of Data Recovery Services

as seen on Article City - Search for 'Article City'
There are several different types of data recovery services, including hard drive, server raid, and smart media recovery. What makes things tricky is to know when to use which service, and how to kno... [Author: Richard Cuthbertson - Computers and Internet - April 08, 2010] >>> More