How to Recover Deleted Files in Unix

Unix is one of the original computer operating systems, developed in the late 1960s at Bell Labs. There are a number of variants of UNIX available for free or commercially in the marketplace today. A common task for both users and administrators of Unix-based computing systems is to recover deleted files from the operating system while the files can still be retrieved. The "grep" command can be used to recover files in Unix without having to download or purchase specialized data-retrieval software.

Instructions

1. Open the Unix command console on your computer by selecting the console icon if the Unix build has a graphical user interface (GUI).

2. Type the following command at the console window to retrieve a test file that begins with the name "myTextFile" at the command console:
   # grep -i -a -B10 -A100 'myTextFile' /dev/sda1 > myRecoveryFile.txt

3. View the recovered file by using the "vi" editor embedded in Unix by typing the following command at the command console:
   vi myRecoveryFile.txt

References

• Advanced Data Recovery Techniques
• UNIX and LINUX GREP Command FAQ

Resources

• Read this Article in Spanish
• Advanced Data Recovery Techniques
• UNIX and LINUX GREP Command FAQ