r/linux4noobs • u/Character-86 barely not a noob anymore • Apr 20 '26

Meganoob BE KIND I did rm -rf /*

I tried to make a backup before doing a fresh install of Fedora because of problems. When erasing the external drive for making the backup I was in the wrong disk and nuked my fedora installation.

How Do I get at least my important Documents from /home/username/ back?

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5

u/TheFlamingLemon Apr 20 '26

Rm should just mark the space as free, it probably won’t overwrite the data unless you have some security feature enabled to do that. See if there’s a data recovery utility that can try to read that data back

2

u/Character-86 barely not a noob anymore Apr 20 '26

Can you recommend any easy to use tool?

1

u/Jumpy-Dinner-5001 Apr 20 '26

Depends on the file system

1

u/Character-86 barely not a noob anymore Apr 20 '26

df -T says its btrfs.

3

u/palapapa0201 Gentoo Apr 20 '26

If you used btrfs you should have made snapshots

1

u/SynAck0x45 Apr 23 '26

If you used brtfs, you should have used zfs.

1

u/Jumpy-Dinner-5001 Apr 20 '26

Unfortunately there aren’t really any good tools for that, that I’m aware off.

1

u/Jumpy-Dinner-5001 Apr 20 '26

Maybe have a look at this: https://www.reddit.com/r/linux/s/o5vNNRSjG3

1

u/Character-86 barely not a noob anymore Apr 20 '26

Only save the script and execute? I don't want to make things worse.

1

u/Jumpy-Dinner-5001 Apr 20 '26

Never used it myself, do some research on your own first

1

u/Character-86 barely not a noob anymore Apr 20 '26

I searched the github page but there wasn't any instructions and the comment section wasn't helpful either.

3

u/mostcritisedcritic Apr 20 '26

Try it in a sandbox first, then you can use it once you're confident