DiskDigger — Undelete and recover photos, documents, music, videos, and more!

This brief guide explains how to run DiskDigger under the most popular Linux distributions. Since DiskDigger is written for the .NET 4.0 framework, it can run in Linux if you have the Mono package installed. Most flavors of Linux already come with Mono installed, but there are some additional packages that need to be installed that fall under the libmono-system-windows-forms and libmono-system-design packages.

Here are some quick tips for getting DiskDigger up and running in various Linux and Unix distributions:

Ubuntu

Simply install the packages for Windows Forms 4.0 for Mono with the following command:

$ sudo apt-get install libmono-system-windows-forms4* libmono-system-design*

Download DiskDigger, unzip it, and launch it with sudo:

$ wget http://diskdigger.org/diskdigger.zip
$ unzip diskdigger.zip
$ sudo mono DiskDigger.exe

If the above line gives an error, try explicitly specifying the runtime version:

$ sudo mono --runtime=v4.0 DiskDigger.exe

Linux Mint

Install all winforms-related packages:

$ sudo apt-get install libmono-system-windows-forms4* libmono-system-design*

Download DiskDigger, unzip it, and launch it with sudo:

$ wget http://diskdigger.org/diskdigger.zip
$ unzip diskdigger.zip
$ sudo mono DiskDigger.exe

If the above line gives an error, try explicitly specifying the runtime version:

$ sudo mono --runtime=v4.0 DiskDigger.exe

Fedora

Install all winforms-related packages:

$ sudo yum install libmono-system-windows-forms4* libmono-system-design*

Download DiskDigger, unzip it, and launch it with sudo:

$ wget http://diskdigger.org/diskdigger.zip
$ unzip diskdigger.zip
$ sudo mono DiskDigger.exe

If the above line gives an error, try explicitly specifying the runtime version:

$ sudo mono --runtime=v4.0 DiskDigger.exe

OpenSUSE

Install all winforms-related packages:

$ sudo zypper install libmono-system-windows-forms4* libmono-system-design*

In OpenSUSE, I've found that launching DiskDigger as a regular user (with sudo) doesn't work because the root user can't access the current X-server display. So, you'll need to log in as root, and launch DiskDigger:

# wget http://diskdigger.org/diskdigger.zip
# unzip diskdigger.zip
# mono DiskDigger.exe

If the above line gives an error, try explicitly specifying the runtime version:

# mono --runtime=v4.0 DiskDigger.exe

Debian

Install all winforms-related packages:

$ sudo apt-get install libmono-system-windows-forms4* libmono-system-design*

Download DiskDigger, unzip it, and launch it with sudo:

$ wget http://diskdigger.org/diskdigger.zip
$ unzip diskdigger.zip
$ sudo mono DiskDigger.exe

If the above line gives an error, try explicitly specifying the runtime version:

$ sudo mono --runtime=v4.0 DiskDigger.exe

FreeBSD

Log in as root, and install the libgdiplus package (this is assuming that you've got xorg, gnome2, and mono installed):

# pkg_add -r libgdiplus

Download DiskDigger, unzip it, and launch it:

# wget http://diskdigger.org/diskdigger.zip
# unzip diskdigger.zip
# mono DiskDigger.exe

If the above line gives an error, try explicitly specifying the runtime version:

# mono --runtime=v4.0 DiskDigger.exe

You have to run DiskDigger as a superuser (sudo) because it requires low-level access to your disk(s). If you don't run it as a superuser, it will not be able to detect or read any of the disks in your system.

Considerations

Here are a few things to keep in mind when running DiskDigger in Linux:

• It tries to automatically detect the disks in your system by scanning for devices of the form "/dev/sdn", "/dev/hdn", and so on. If your disk has a different device mapping, or if you want to scan a particular partition (e.g. "/dev/sda1"), you'll need to manually enter it in the "Advanced" tab on the main screen of DiskDigger.
• When you save any recoverable files, they are saved under the root (sudo) user's permissions. This means that you may need to chmod the permissions on the recovered files to make them accessible to non-sudo users.

What about Mac OS X?

Absolutely! Please refer here for hints about running DiskDigger on OS X.

Have fun!

...and let me know if you have any issues!