files disappeared

[Linda]

On 07/03/2015 01:14 PM, Petter Adsen wrote:
> On Fri, 03 Jul 2015 11:15:11 -0500
> Linda <haniganwork at earthlink.net> wrote:
>
>> I am using Lubuntu 14.04.2.  I was looking at a file in a
>> directory earlier this morning and everything was fine. Then
>> I went back to check something and every file has
>> disappeared from that directory.
>> They do not appear in Trash and they do not appear in the
>> terminal window with a ls -la, however they do appear with
>> locate. They also don't appear in recent opened files in
>> Libre Office even though that is what I looked at them with.
>> Any ideas how or why they disappeared and how I can recover
>> them?
> The reason they still appear when you run locate is that locate
> searches a database, it doesn't actually search the file system like
> for example 'find' does. The database has not been updated since before
> the files were deleted, that's why they are still listed.
>
> How/why they disappeared? I don't know. Could be disk/filesystem
> corruption (in which case there should be hints in the system logs),
> the system might have been compromised, or it could just be user error
> (more likely, easy to do). Files generally don't delete themselves
> without trace.
>
> How to restore them? That depends on a lot of different things, but
> a search engine is your friend there. Assuming the filesystem is ext4,
> a quick search would look something like this:
>
> https://duckduckgo.com/?q=undelete+files+ext4&t=canonical&ia=qa
>
> Which returns several useful tips. The third hit from the top looks
> promising if you are looking for a quick fix. Skimming through a few of
> the other hits would probably be a very good idea, as data recovery can
> be a complex process. It could be useful to read up on a couple of
> different ways of doing things before deciding what approach to take.
>
> Note: You should avoid installing anything on, and performing as few
> writes as possible to the filesystem the files were on until you have
> recovered as much data as possible. Make an image of the filesystem on
> another device if you can (you can use 'dd' for this), and/or do the
> recovery from a live CD. Any writes to the filesystem can overwrite the
> space the deleted files occupied, making recovery next to impossible.
>
> Petter
>
>
>
Accidently deleting a file seems possible, deleting all of 
the files in a directory but leaving the directory 
especially when just opening a file with libre office seems 
unlikely, especially deleting them in a way that doesn't put 
them in trash.  I have started wading through the logs and 
will spend sometime on that but I'm not finding read/write 
errors. It is ext4 and also is the first machine I have with 
a solid state drive. It has made we wonder about file 
system/disk stability so I am busy backing up.  I figured 
that was the case with locate I had used it to see if I had 
somehow accidentally moved them. The find suggestion is 
helpful. Any idea what sort of messages I should be looking 
for if it is a filesystem/disk issue  a much greater concern 
than the lost files.
            Thanks
              Linda
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