Re: recover file after cat /dev/null > file

[Steve Lord <lord@xxxxxxx>]

> if /dev/null has been catted over an existing file,
> is there any way to recover data based on inodes (or anything else)?
> 
> Nothing else has been written to disk since so data should still exist.
> 

Yes, but the tricky part is where. You overwrote the inode and
freed it's extents, the data is somewhere in the freespace on
the filesystem, but locating it is not going to be easy.

Unless the file was very large, or the filesystem fairly full,
the chances are the data is located in the same allocation
group as the inode, but really I cannot tell you more than
that.

Sorry

   Steve