recover data from hp-ux

[mparasur]

Hi,

I am having on hp-ux 11iv2 server on itanium. It accidently got formatted. Unfortunately i dont have any backup of the server.

Is there any way to retrieve my old data..

Expecting your valuable reply.

Thanks in Advance,
Mani

[Robert-Jan Goossens]

Hi Mani,

Formatted as in newfs? No you will not be able to recover your data.

Regards,
Robert-Jan

[Matti_Kurkela]

First, a warning: if you hope to recover anything from the disk, *do not write* any new data on it. Do not re-install the OS on that disk.

As newfs does not overwrite all of the disk, there might be a way to recover at least some of the data.

But as the primary filesystem structures are overwritten (making the filesystems look empty), the recovery will be a long and tedious operation, and *some* data might be totally overwritten. You would need to know a lot about the internal structures of the filesystem to identify and piece together the individual files.

If you're willing to pay for the recovery of the data, contact a professional data recovery company (e.g. Norman Ibas). They have a lot of specialized tools for this kind of problems. Check the prices first, though: this kind of recovery is not exactly cheap.

MK

[Mridul Shrivastava]

If you have created a newfs then it woun't be possible.. If you have destroyed only LVM headers using pvcreate etc then it could be recovered..

[Rita C Workman]

If I read your message correctly, you say your 'server', hence vg00 was never backed up and got formatted.
You don't mention exactly what 'formatted' you did, nor anything else you may have attempted once you realized what happened.

With that limited information, my estimate would be that you will be rebuilding the server. With that said, I tend to doubt you will be able to retrieve anything and since you have no backup (tape) you just lost your data.

A painful lesson that once learned should never be repeated.

Regards,
Rita

[Marco A.]

If you did that, well, there's not way to restore your data, but is yours is a critical data, then http://www.drivesavers.com/ , they restore all you need !! ... ask them !!!

Hope this helps,

Rgds,

[Steven E. Protter]

Shalom Mani,

How did you format it?

Depending on the method you may be able to boot a recovery shell(Boot CD/DVD) and get some data off of it.

Depends totally on erasure methodoloty.

SEP

[A. Clay Stephenson]

You have now learned a very valueable , if painful, lesson. Those who have good backups don't need them; those who don't ... . If you "format" was running mkfs or newfs then only the data in that logical volume were lost. You could at least retrieve the other data on disk.

Be very glad that you weren't working for me (note the past tense). I can understand the accidental overwrite, format, or erasure of data but I cannot understand the lack of a backup.

[mparasur]

Thanks for your suggestions. Now I am happy that the user does not the data. So I am closing this thread..

Thanks once again.