From: David Hayes Subject: restoring ext3 filesystem overwritten by ext4 Date: Sat, 21 Jul 2012 20:49:07 +1200 Message-ID: Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=ISO-8859-1 To: linux-ext4@vger.kernel.org Return-path: Received: from mail-wg0-f44.google.com ([74.125.82.44]:58483 "EHLO mail-wg0-f44.google.com" rhost-flags-OK-OK-OK-OK) by vger.kernel.org with ESMTP id S1752401Ab2GUItI (ORCPT ); Sat, 21 Jul 2012 04:49:08 -0400 Received: by wgbdr13 with SMTP id dr13so4335225wgb.1 for ; Sat, 21 Jul 2012 01:49:07 -0700 (PDT) Sender: linux-ext4-owner@vger.kernel.org List-ID: This is a general question about whether it should be possible to effectively undo a mkfs.ext4 on a partition which previously held an ext3 filesystem. I'm just a user, not a developer, so I'm not familiar with the details of where backup superblocks get written etc. I had no luck finding any old filesystem information with testdisk, so I'm wondering whether ext4 might overwrite all the superblocks by coincidence of choosing the same blocks in the partition to write them as mkfs.ext3 did, or something. If the answer to the above is "yes" I'll respond with more specific details if required. Thanks, David.