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NTFSUNDELETE(8) |
FreeBSD System Manager's Manual |
NTFSUNDELETE(8) |
ntfsundelete - recover a deleted file from an NTFS volume.
ntfsundelete [options] device
ntfsundelete has three modes of operation: scan,
undelete and copy.
The default mode, scan simply reads an NTFS Volume and
looks for files that have been deleted. Then it will print a list giving the
inode number, name and size.
The undelete mode takes the files either matching the
regular expression (option -m) or specified by the inode-expressions and
recovers as much of the data as possible. It saves the result to another
location. Partly for safety, but mostly because NTFS write support isn't
finished.
This is a wizard's option. It will save a portion of the MFT to a
file. This probably only be useful when debugging ntfsundelete
ntfsundelete only ever reads from the NTFS Volume.
ntfsundelete will never change the volume.
ntfsundelete cannot perform the impossible.
When a file is deleted the MFT Record is marked as not in use and
the bitmap representing the disk usage is updated. If the power isn't turned
off immediately, the free space, where the file used to live, may become
overwritten. Worse, the MFT Record may be reused for another file. If this
happens it is impossible to tell where the file was on disk.
Even if all the clusters of a file are not in use, there is no
guarantee that they haven't been overwritten by some short-lived file.
In NTFS all the filenames are stored as Unicode. They will be
converted into the current locale for display by ntfsundelete. The
utility has successfully displayed some Chinese pictogram filenames and then
correctly recovered them.
In rare circumstances, a single MFT Record will not be large
enough to hold the metadata describing a file (a file would have to be in
hundreds of fragments for this to happen). In these cases one MFT record may
hold the filename, but another will hold the information about the data.
ntfsundelete will not try and piece together such records. It will
simply show unnamed files with data.
ntfsundelete cannot recover compressed or encrypted files.
When scanning for them, it will display as being 0% recoverable.
To recover a file ntfsundelete has to read the file's
metadata. Unfortunately, this isn't always intact. When a file is deleted,
the metadata can be left in an inconsistent state. e.g. the file size may be
zero; the dates of the file may be set to the time it was deleted, or
random.
To be safe ntfsundelete will pick the largest file size it finds and
write that to disk. It will also try and set the file's date to the last
modified date. This date may be the correct last modified date, or something
unexpected.
Below is a summary of all the options that ntfsundelete
accepts. Nearly all options have two equivalent names. The short name is
preceded by - and the long name is preceded by --. Any single
letter options, that don't take an argument, can be combined into a single
command, e.g. -fv is equivalent to -f -v. Long named options
can be abbreviated to any unique prefix of their name.
- -b, --byte
NUM
- If any clusters of the file cannot be recovered, the missing parts will be
filled with this byte. The default is zeros.
- -C, --case
- When scanning an NTFS volume, any filename matching (using the
--match option) is case-insensitive. This option makes the matching
case-sensitive.
- -c, --copy
RANGE
- This wizard's option will write a block of MFT FILE records to a file. The
default file is mft which will be created in the current directory.
This option can be combined with the --output and
--destination options.
- -d, --destination
DIR
- This option controls where to put the output file of the --undelete
and --copy options.
- -f, --force
- This will override some sensible defaults, such as not overwriting an
existing file. Use this option with caution.
- -h, --help
- Show a list of options with a brief description of each one.
- -i, --inodes
RANGE
- Recover the files with these inode numbers. RANGE can be a single
inode number, several numbers separated by commas "," or a range
separated by a dash "-".
- -m, --match
PATTERN
- Filter the output by only looking for matching filenames. The pattern can
include the wildcards '?', match exactly one character or '*', match zero
or more characters. By default the matching is case-insensitive. To make
the search case sensitive, use the --case option.
- -O,
--optimistic
- Recover parts of the file even if they are currently marked as in
use.
- -o, --output
FILE
- Use this option to set name of output file that --undelete or
--copy will create.
- -P, --parent
- Display the parent directory of a deleted file.
- -p, --percentage
NUM
- Filter the output of the --scan option, by only matching files with
a certain amount of recoverable content. Please read the caveats
section for more details.
- -q, --quiet
- Reduce the amount of output to a minimum. Naturally, it doesn't make sense
to combine this option with --scan.
- -s, --scan
- Search through an NTFS volume and print a list of files that could be
recovered. This is the default action of ntfsundelete. This list
can be filtered by filename, size, percentage recoverable or last
modification time, using the --match, --size,
--percent and --time options, respectively.
The output of scan will be:
Inode Flags %age Date Time Size Filename
6038 FN.. 93% 2002-07-17 13:42 26629 thesis.doc
Flag |
Description |
F/D |
File/Directory |
N/R |
(Non-)Resident data stream |
C/E |
Compressed/Encrypted data stream |
! |
Missing attributes |
The percentage field shows how much of the file can
potentially be recovered.
- -S, --size
RANGE
- Filter the output of the --scan option, by looking for a particular
range of file sizes. The range may be specified as two numbers separated
by a '-'. The sizes may be abbreviated using the suffixes k, m, g, t, for
kilobytes, megabytes, gigabytes and terabytes respectively.
- -t, --time
SINCE
- Filter the output of the --scan option. Only match files that have
been altered since this time. The time must be given as number using a
suffix of d, w, m, y for days, weeks, months or years ago.
- -T,
--truncate
- If ntfsundelete is confident about the size of a deleted file, then
it will restore the file to exactly that size. The default behaviour is to
round up the size to the nearest cluster (which will be a multiple of 512
bytes).
- -u,
--undelete
- Select undelete mode. You can specify the files to be recovered
using by using --match or --inodes options. This option can
be combined with --output, --destination, and --byte.
When the file is recovered it will be given its original name,
unless the --output option is used.
- -v, --verbose
- Increase the amount of output that ntfsundelete prints.
- -V, --version
- Show the version number, copyright and license for
ntfsundelete.
Look for deleted files on /dev/hda1.
Look for deleted documents on /dev/hda1.
ntfsundelete /dev/hda1 -s -m '*.doc'
Look for deleted files between 5000 and 6000000 bytes, with at least 90% of the
data recoverable, on /dev/hda1.
ntfsundelete /dev/hda1 -S 5k-6m -p 90
Look for deleted files altered in the last two days
ntfsundelete /dev/hda1 -t 2d
Undelete inodes 2, 5 and 100 to 131 of device /dev/sda1
ntfsundelete /dev/sda1 -u -i 2,5,100-131
Undelete inode number 3689, call the file 'work.doc', set it to recovered size
and put it in the user's home directory.
ntfsundelete /dev/hda1 -u -T -i 3689 -o work.doc -d ~
Save MFT Records 3689 to 3690 to a file 'debug'
ntfsundelete /dev/hda1 -c 3689-3690 -o debug
There are some small limitations to ntfsundelete, but
currently no known bugs. If you find a bug please send an email describing
the problem to the development team:
ntfs-3g-devel@lists.sf.net
ntfsundelete was written by Richard Russon and Holger
Ohmacht, with contributions from Anton Altaparmakov. It was ported to
ntfs-3g by Erik Larsson and Jean-Pierre Andre.
ntfsundelete is part of the ntfs-3g package and is
available from:
https://github.com/tuxera/ntfs-3g/wiki/
ntfsinfo(8), ntfsprogs(8)
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