Backup Formatted Data - format

I Formatted My D: dard drive partition and I installed Windows on it by mistake. I would have to Install window to C: drive and that was my mistake.
Is there anyway to get my old data of that was stored in D: drive before format.
Please Help me to do this..

Not without having a second hard disk, or a second computer to mount it to.
Also you would need to have data recovery software to do a complete recovery on something like this.
Basic instructions.
shutdown the computer, secure the drive.
Install another hard disk, format, install windows.
Lately I've been recommending getdataback by runtime.org, it's about $99. You most likely need the ntfs version. Install that, (You can test it without purchasing it but you cannot complete the recovery without installing a license)
shutdown the computer.
slave the old hard disk
change the bios settings, if the drive is not identified.
boot into windows run, get data back for ntfs.
choose formatted media
let it run for a few hours.
select the data you want back, save the recovery, install the license, complete the recovery.
it's as easy as that.
More importantly, stop using the computer as any download or use could destroy the data still sitting on the drive by overwriting the data.

Related

Migrate FreeNAS Data to Windows (over SMB)

My FreeNAS server is slowly dying and before that happens i need to migrate all data in the NAS to a windows server.
The FreeNAS has ZFS Snapshots and i need to restore data from a few days ago to the Windows server.
I have done some research and i can't think of the best way to do this. (i am not linux/Zfs savvy)
So the things i need to do is,
Restore ZFS Snaptshot from a few days ago to a windows Server
I mounted a windows share to the Freenas using mount_smbfs //username:password#server.name/share_name share_name/
I can copy and create files on that share just fine. So I was wondering if it was possible to restore an entire data set from an snapshot to the windows share.
Any help, tips is much appreciated.
Note. I could easily copy all data on a freenas volume to the windows share, but what makes it complicated for me, is restoring data from a snapshot without overwriting the current data on the volume and moving that data to the windows share.
You have two sensible possibilities:
Access the ZFS dataset (shared over SMB) from your Windows Server, then right-click on it in Explorer and choose "Previous Versions". You will get (after a short time depending on the number of snapshots) a list of all snapshots with their dates. You can then either explore them and copy some files over, or you can choose to copy all to another location (e. g. your new share).
Mount the Windows share on FreeNAS like you did, then go to <pool>/<filesystem>/.zfs/snapshot/ (path completion on the shell might be turned off for the .zfs directory, so type it in manually). There you'll find all your snapshots (like you would have on Windows' Previous Versions) and you can copy some or all files over to the new directory.
I would suggest the first way, because you have the GUI and cannot do any harm to the FreeNAS system this way.
On the other hand, have you thought about the possibility of rescuing the system? You did not specify why it's dying, but things like hard drives or mainboards can be swapped quite easily without requiring setting up everything anew. Maybe this would help you more than moving the data off to another, unconfigured system?

Unload a minifilter driver with no unload routine?

This is probably a pretty easy question to answer for someone that is experienced with FS minifilters. I am trying to script the removal of a filter driver and device.
Some background... this driver is running on Windows 8/10 x64. The vendor that created the driver has not been helpful in fulfilling my request for a removal tool. Unfortunately their MSI uninstall is buggy and only works about half the time you run it... They want us to upgrade to their newest version that doesn't have the bug we are encountering during uninstallation. We aren't interested in continuing use of this software so a paid upgrade seems frivolous... Their only suggestion has been to reimage the computers without the software that includes the FS minifilter device... That's out of the questions because it is on 1000+ computers...
Basically, their official uninstaller does an API callback to one of their servers and verifies the machines eligibility to uninstall:
Does the MAC address of the primary network adapter exist in their
database?
Does the password you entered for uninstallation match
what is set in their database?
If you are eligible, it runs an MSI uninstallation and disables the FS filter, removes the driver file, service files, configuration, and restarts... The bug that is keeping us from doing a normal bulk removal (their way) is that the MSI freezes during the removal process (after checking eligibility) and requires us to restart a client computer up to 3 times to finish the uninstall.
I have been able to successfully remove the software and device/driver by externally mounting the Windows file system and manually removing the driver file under System32/Drivers and also removing all of the actual program files/services. I have not been able to do this booted onto the same partition where the minifilter is loaded. The minifilter driver that is running is protecting those program files, a registry key, and the actual .sys file under System32...
I've done some basic reverse engineering of their MSI... They are using custom actions to perform the removal... First step is the removal of the service, second step is the removal of the minifilter. Both actions are done via an executable that is packaged in the MSI... I've extracted that and attempted to use it by running the same commands that they do during the MSI... I haven't had any luck. The minifilter just doesn't want to die.
They have some other custom actions that are loaded via DLL. Initial investigation makes me think its all of their custom uninstall eligibility craziness.
It looks like their minifilter doesn't have an unload routine built in. Using FLTMC I get this error attempting to detach and/or unload:
0x801f0010 Do not detach the filter from the volume at this time.
0x801f0014 Do not detach the filter from the volume at this time.
Does anyone know of a good way to unload a minifilter that is throwing those errors?
Try to kick out FltMgr.sys of the kernel by:
Renaming %SystemRoot%\sytem32\drivers\FltMgr.sys
Or changing HKLM\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Services\FltMgr\Type to 0x4 (Disabled)
Reboot
Minifilters can't work without Filter Manager.
If you are desperate enough, look into Windows PE, available as part of the Windows Assessment and Deployment Kit.
A Windows PE image can be remotely installed onto a machine's hard disk and configured to perform whatever task you need done and then automatically reboot back into the original operating system. Doing it this way gives you the same access as externally mounting the infected file system, but can be automated. I've used this approach in the past to automate offline maintenance tasks on several hundred machines (e.g., changing a registry setting that Symantec Endpoint Protection was "protecting") and while getting it working is fiddly, once it is working it works well.
My email address is in my profile, you're welcome to contact me if you decide on this approach and have questions about implementing it.
Alternatively, depending on your jurisdiction and circumstances, you might want to consider threatening the vendor with a lawsuit if they refuse to provide a proper solution. They broke your computers, it should be their job to fix it. From the sounds of it, they wouldn't even need to do any work, just let you have the upgraded version for a few weeks free of charge.

How do I Install Xcode 6 or 7 on an external drive?

The capacity of my SSD is just 60Gb, and I have just over 5Gb of free space at the moment. Is there a way to install Xcode directly on the external drive? Or to do so I'd have first to make this drive bootable and boot my system from it?
There are various possible solutions, including, making use of symlinks, dual booting two versions of macOS (one on external SSD), and many more.
But the best way I found was to create a new macOS user and change its home directory to external SSD (by going to advanced user settings under Users & Groups System Preferences).
The exact steps I followed:
Create a new APFS partition on external SSD with 100GB storage. (say NewVol)
Create new macOS user and change its home directory to /Volume/NewVol/user
Logged into the new user with external SSD connected, and installed xcode in ~/Application. (i.e. the local Application folder, not /Application)
Why this works best is because you don't need to manually manage symlinks, also symlinks might create problems during builds. All the required files (including builds and temporary files) are stored in user directory, so no space occupied on internal drive. Also, no hassle of installing a complete separate OS, and going through cycles of reboots to switch the OS.
There are a couple of options you can consider.
Move some files to the external drive, instead of installing applications on it. This would be your best bet, since applications have dependancies. Also, if you run them from your SSD, they will get better performance.
If you absolutely need your files on your SSD, and you can't move them, then I would suggest moving any third party applications to see if you can free up space for Xcode, and run it from your SSD.
If the two options above don't work for you, then you will have to try and work with Xcode. There is no easy way to change the install location. Your option here would be to free up some space temporarily, by moving bigger files to an external drive. Then do the Xcode install in your applications folder. Once that's done, move Xcode to the external drive, and take your files back to your SSD. Here is another questions that talks about the same topic.

Full Online System Backup Debian

I'm not familier with linux and debian system I work most with windows computers. But one of my clients uses debian linux web server and I need to upgrade the server's raid array.
Before I do anything with the server I would need a full system backup. I search through the internet for solution and also this site, but I haven't found acceptable answer.
I would need something like LVM snapshot, but I don't want to convert everything to LVM partition just for a backup. I found the DD to make bit by bit copy of the hardrive, but I should unmount the drive for it and I don't too much service offline. The reconfiguration of the raid will be enough offline. I found solution like TAR the necessary files and send through SSH, but it isn't a full system backup. I do backup every month form the files and settings.
I need a solution that makes an easy restorable image file of the server for emergency case. If the raid configuration fails I will need SOS restoration of the full system to the old config.
You should use rsync.
It's not a snapshot, but if you don't want to use LVM, it's a start.

Windows Home Server backup solution

I admit this is not strictly a programming question, although I do use my WHS as a source repository server for home projects, and I'm guessing many other coders here do as well.
Does anyone have a recommendation for a good backup solution for the non-fileshare portion of Windows Home Server? All the WHS backups I've seen handle the fileshares, but none of the system files or other administrative stuff on the box.
Thanks,
Andy
Windows Home Server is designed to not need a backup of the OS. If your system drive fails, install a new drive, and then boot the WHS OS setup disc and install the OS. It will find the data on the other drives and recreate all the shared folders. You do need to do some configuring once it is back up but that is pretty small compared to not having to back it up.
One good solution for backing up the home server itself is to attach an external drive, say via USB 2.0 or eSATA. For this to work, though, you need the supporting software like Norton Ghost or something similar installed on your WHS server.
Windows Home Server Power Pack 1 (aka WHS PP1) added a feature to perform backups of the WHS shared folders to an external drive -- as you mention, this feature is only intended to do the data side and not the OS.
If you have an HP MediaSmart server, you could try the method mentioned in Quick & Easy Windows Home Server Backup and Restore. The author said it worked for him, but of course, caveat emptor. This technique has you creating a disk-image for your backup, and using that to restore from in the Recovery Disk / Restore disk process.
If you want a faster way to recover your OS and you do not have a Media Smart server, you can also check out these instructions on how to use a USB flash drive for installing WHS, and merge in the instructions found above for restoring a disk image vis-à-vis the OS Recovery disk process.
WHS OS backup solved by running two copies of WHS each on its own computer in a virtual machine with each WHS backing up the other (running in a VM makes the WHS a file thus able to be backed up and restored by WHS).
iDrive is Great and free under 2 gigs

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