How to recover lost files in Linux using Foremost
Tags: recovery, data, linux, foremost
Published: 2022-12-01 08:41:20

A lot of people don't know that Foremost is a very good command line program for recovering lost files. It's actually in many distros by default and it's very easy to use, as you'll see in the article.

# Introduction

When a file is deleted, the data is not immediately removed from the storage device. The operating system simply removes the reference to the file from the file system table. The space that was occupied by the file is now marked as free space and can be overwritten by new data.

If you act quickly, you may be able to recover lost files using Foremost. Foremost is a data recovery program that uses headers and footers to identify files. It can search a storage device for specific file types and recover them.

# What is Foremost?

Foremost is a data recovery program that can be used to recover lost files in Linux. The program works by looking for patterns in the data that are characteristic of specific file types, and then extracting the data from the file. Foremost can be used to recover a wide variety of file types, including images, documents, and even video files. 
How does Foremost work?

Foremost works by looking for patterns in the data that are characteristic of specific file types. Once a file type has been identified, Foremost will then attempt to extract the data from the file. In order to do this, Foremost uses a number of different techniques, including looking for headers and footers, and using heuristics to guess the structure of the file.

# How to install Foremost?

In order to use Foremost to recover lost files, you will need to have a Linux system with the Foremost package installed. The Foremost package is available through many different package managers, so consult your package manager's documentation for instructions on how to install it. Once you have Foremost installed, you can begin using it to recover lost files.

For debian-based:

```bash
sudo apt install foremost
```

For arch-based:

```bash
sudo pacman -S foremost
```

# How to use Foremost?

Assuming you have already installed Foremost, here are the steps to follow to recover lost files using this tool.

## 1. Scan your directory to recover

```bash
sudo fdisk -l
```

![Target](https://dev-to-uploads.s3.amazonaws.com/uploads/articles/to7cc9nfedso4veek59z.png)

In this case, mine is at `/dev/sdc`.

## 2. Create an output directory for the recovered files

```bash
mkdir /output
```

3.  Run Foremost with desired options against the image file

```bash
sudo foremost -q -v -t png -i /dev/sdc -o /output
```

![Running](https://dev-to-uploads.s3.amazonaws.com/uploads/articles/ucw2z23t5q9xlzpxayet.png)

You can use the "-i" option to specify the input file, which is typically a disk image or partition that you wish to search. The "-q" and "-v" is for quick scan and verbose/logging respectively.

Once you have specified the input file, you can then use the "-o" option to specify the output file. This is the file that Foremost will write the recovered files to. It is important to note that Foremost will overwrite any existing files in the output file, so make sure that you do not specify an existing file as your output file.


![Result](https://dev-to-uploads.s3.amazonaws.com/uploads/articles/9jd36rbwgpdp7r3y9n84.png)


# Conclusion

Foremost is a powerful data recovery tool that can be used to recover lost files in Linux. In this article, we have provided a step-by-step guide on how to use Foremost to recover lost files. We hope that this guide will be useful for you and help you get your lost files back.