One of the hard drives in my local linux server crashed recently (obviously a hardware problem). After a restart e2fsck fixed the drive but all data are lost (it looks like the partitions are completely clean). I had a few files there that I would like to recover and here's my question: is there a tool for linux/windows that would allow me to go through the hard drive in low-level and check sector by sector searching for specific keyword? The files were PHP scripts and I would like them to save on another drives (it was only few kbs). I'm sure the data are there but the partition information are deleted and also programs for ext2 recovery are unable to handle it. I need something that works on a lower (sector by sector) level.

Hi,

I am not sure if this helps, but the mc utility in linux is able to recover a lot of files and directories from fsck and otherwise accidently deleted by the root/user.

hope it will get you started

:homer:

Yes, it can be done. I don't know any integrated tool that can do this. However it will no be very easy to do this if your partitions are destroyed. I suggest you to try a specialized company if your php files are so important.