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In a previous Centos 6 install, Windows 10 was installed months ago and the Centos 6 GRUB file was updated to select dual boot by disk name.

Recently, due to some kind of error in a reboot, the disk order was changed and Windows tried to boot from an array partition (which contained no OS, only data), destroying it and just leaving a 150 something Mb boot partition where there was a full disk XFS partition.

Now I have that array in this state:

GUID partition table

+150 something Mb NTFS file system (presumably the Windows boot partition that destroyed the previous partition)
+10 Tb empty space

I am sure the disk was overwritten by Windows boot and I need to restore the previous partition and access the previous data, but I'm doubting which is the best procedure in this case:

a) Should I delete the NTFS boot partition and try a full testdisk disk recovery?
b) Should I delete the NTFS boot partition and use fdisk or similar to automagically restore the previous partition?
c) Should I use low-level recovery software to try to recover as much raw data as possible since all hope of a clean restore is gone?

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  • The best approach would be simply to restore from backups. Commented Nov 7, 2017 at 10:17
  • But recovery wise, in case you don't have a backup, how would you do it? Commented Nov 8, 2017 at 14:27
  • A full clone of the entire drive and then you can try Testdisk and other stuff on the clone. If you screw up badly, repeat the cloning and try again. Unfortunately I have not much knowledge about XFS, but it's safe to assume that at least important data was backed up. Commented Nov 8, 2017 at 22:17
  • Thank you, I tried Testdisk but sadly no major partition was found, only small fragments that weren't recoverable. Then I tried xfs_repair first: access.redhat.com/documentation/en-us/red_hat_enterprise_linux/… And I could recover around 200 Mb files. Commented Nov 13, 2017 at 13:16

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The best procedures to recover files in xfs appear to be:

  1. xfs_repair - Link to documentation
    Included or downloadable in several GNU/Linux distributions.

    xfs_check /dev/device --> Analyze the disk (no writing)
    xfs_repair -n --> A more in-depth analysis (no writing)

    xfs_repair --> Actual recovery (writing)

  2. testdisk - Link to documentation
    Free software included in Gparted.

    Follow the steps in the documentation link.

  3. UFS Explorer - Link to product
    Commercial proprietary software.

    Recovery with user friendly GUI, could work if 1. and 2. fail.

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