Recovering ext4 disks from Windows

[spot1984]

I have a damaged disk with a damaged ext4 volume. I've successfully created an image of the volume and can recover files from the image, but since I'm running in Windows I'm not getting the file permissions nor case sensitive filenames. How can I recover these files properly?

I bought RStudio 8.0.164571 but it won't work with the current RStudio8 download, good thing I kept the originally install files together. Should I be able to use the latest version of 8.x? How can I?

I tried installing RStudio Linux on an Ubuntu machine but my key won't work with RStudio Linux. I thought I might be able to open the image and scan files in Linux and recover the files there but I can't or don't know how.

I can't or don't know how mount ext4 volumes in Windows 10.

The technical support articles you have on the site are great but I cannot find one that suits my current problem.

Please advise, thank you.

Scott

[spot1984]

Update:
I found the Linux agent and started recovering files from the Windows machine to my Linux server. The recovery crashed and damaged my servers file system. It was not backed up and now will not boot.

This just turned a problem into a catastrophe.

[Alt]

1. What did you do to crash the Linux server? Saving recovered files? But R-Studio does that through the host system, not directly. What and where did you actually write files to?
2. You need to purchase an upgrade to be able to use R-Studio 8.8. Please contact our sales department for more details.
3. A key for R-Studio for Windows cannot be used to register R-Studio for Linux. It should be purchase separately.
4. And what kind of files are you recovering?

[spot1984]

1. Ran recovery agent on the Linux machine, connected to it from the windows machine and was restoring files from r-studio running on Windows to a directory in the home directory on the Linux machine. I left the lengthy operation unattended, after some time I looked back and r-studio was no longer running on the Windows machine - it had crashed or terminated. The agent was still running on the Ubuntu machine but was unresponsive. I restarted the Linux machine (sudo shutdown -r now) and received many many messages /dev/sda1: recovering journal and Clearing orphaned inodes. The Linux machine would no longer boot into graphics mode, will not accept ssh connections, and cannot be logged in from the command prompt as described above.
2. ok fine
3. yes as expected
4. The recovery is an ext4 file system whose volume was damaged, probably in a power outage. I've successfully recovered many of the needed files on the Windows machine, I was hoping to recover them to a case sensitive file system with the original permissions. r-studio does not appear to restore the permissions as the files that were recovered onto the Linux machine (there is a partial recovery on the file system) had the permissions granted to the recovery agent, so this was for nothing.

The OS could not be repaired. I've spent all of Sunday setting up my server from scratch and am not done. Fortunately though the OS was hopelessly damaged, the file system in the home directory and /etc appear to be intact so I haven't discovered any irreplaceable data loss... yet. I've used my license of r-studio to successfully restore files from a few drives, including my wife's pictures of her recently deceased father and generally it's my go-to product on Windows. This is the first time I've tried to restore over the network or onto a linux system (obviously), and I will not try this again on any installation I care about.

I'm extremely frustrated and angry right now.

[Alt]

Well, it may sound like a very stupid question, but that sometimes happened. Did you save recovered files to the SAME machine you recovered files from?

[spot1984]

Of course not.

[Alt]

So, my understanding is that
1. There was Linux computer 1 from which you were recovering files. The Agent was running on it.
2.There was a Windows computer where R-Studio was running.
3. There was Linux computer 2 which recovered files were being saved to.
The recovery was from Linux 1 through Windows to Linux 2.
Which Linux computer was crashed? Sorry for such questions, but I really cannot completely understand the situation.
My guess is Linux 1. Correct?

[spot1984]

No, you have not understood at all.

1. A Mint Linux computer failed - the partition was damaged and could not be mounted.
2. The drive was removed from the system
3. The drive was placed in a removable storage USB dock and connected to a Windows PC
4. R-Studio was run on the Windows machine
5. An Image of the partition was created on the Windows machine

6. *** At this point the hard disk was removed and placed on a shelf, the original computer has no hard disk in it and is not involved whatsoever ***

7. A scan of the image was created on the Windows machine
8. The RTT Recovery Agent was installed on ANOTHER Ubuntu Linux machine - my server.
9. R-Studio on Windows connected to the Recovery Agent on my Linux server over the wired network (nothing to do with the original machine)
10. I started recovering files from the image using r-Studio running on the Windows machine to the Recovery Agent running on my server
11. r-Studio on the Windows machine closed unexpectedly without a trace
12. The Recovery Agent running on my healthy server became unresponsive. I could not close it so I rebooted (sudo shutdown -r now)
13. When the server booted Ubuntu tried to repair the journal of the ext4 file system - it never booted again.

I have since run extended S.M.A.R.T. scan on my servers drive, it is 100% healthy.

The most likely conclusion is that either r-Studio crashed on the Windows machine and/or the Recovery Agent had a problem, either way the result is that the Recovery Agent corrupted my server's file system so badly that I had to re-image it.

I'm past this, I've had to rebuild my server from the ground up, there is no help you can give me today.
The only reason I bothered to post this message is to let people know what really happened here.

[Alt]

I understand that, thank you.