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I want to know how to find any folder which has been deleted by accident. I cannot find my Document, Pictures and Video folders in $HOME. They just disappeared. I tried doing cd ~/Documents from the terminal but there seems to be no folder.

Any idea how to look for them ?

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3 Answers

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Depends on what you mean. But if you REALLY deleted them and they are not in trash you could try with: http://www.cgsecurity.org/wiki/PhotoRec

I would definitly run it from a boot cd (and not install it on the harddrive) if the home-partition are the same as the root partition. Otherwise you will likely overwrite the lost files.

But you will need luck...

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Thanks, Will have a look. But I am very curious to know how I managed to delete them. I have no recollection of deleting them. I just woke up today morning to find they are gone! lol! Is there any log file which might have recorded the events? – Ubuntuser Dec 30 '11 at 8:27
I do not think there will be any logentry of that. But a common misstake, that Mandar Vaze reminded us off in his answer, is that people sometimes move folder by misstake using drag and drop (always happened to my father in the past). In that case you can use his solution to search for it. – Niclas Nilsson Dec 30 '11 at 8:32
If you are desperate and nothing else works I would suggest purchasing Spinrite. Files can disappear though to disk errors... Could possible be worth a try. Even though I don't think that is the problem here. – Niclas Nilsson Dec 30 '11 at 8:34
Thanks . I used my reliable Deja Dup to restore my system! Phew!! :). My documents folder is always synced with U1. So thats not the worry! I have to start syncing my music, picture and video folders to the cloud! – Ubuntuser Dec 30 '11 at 9:20
Good! :) .......... – Niclas Nilsson Dec 30 '11 at 9:23
up vote 0 down vote

If these are deleted from GUI (nautilus) there are chances that you'll find them in "Trash" - from there you can recover it.

If these are deleted via terminal using "rm" command, tough luck. Niclas Nilsson has suggested some option which may work

Id the folder are moved (accidentally) rather than deleted - then try to "find" them. Nautilus has "search" option. You can try find ~ -name "*Documents" -print from terminal.

Best Wishes for recovering your data.

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I strongly recommend to read this before any action.

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