File Recovery

/tigress and /projects

In some cases it is possible to recover files that have been removed from /tigress or /projects. If you log in to Tigressdata (ssh <YourNetID>@tigressdata.princeton.edu) you will find a directory mounted called /backups. Try looking for your files in /backups/tigress or /backups/projects. This directory contains a snapshot of your files at the time of the most recent backup. You may be able to find previous snapshots in a hidden .snapshots directory, for example:

$ ssh ceisgrub@tigressdata.princeton.edu
[ceisgrub@tigressdata2 ~]$ cd /backups/tigress/c/ceisgrub
[ceisgrub@tigressdata2 ceisgrub]$ ls
file1.txt  file2.txt  file3.txt

[ceisgrub@tigressdata2 ceisgrub]$ cd .snapshots
[ceisgrub@tigressdata2 .snapshots]$ ls
SNAP-2020.01.11-00.36.15  SNAP-2020.01.25-03.33.52  SNAP-2020.02.01-02.29.24  SNAP-2020.02.05-19.27.38  SNAP-2020.02.13-22.40.15

[ceisgrub@tigressdata2 .snapshots]$ cd SNAP-2020.02.05-19.27.38/
[ceisgrub@tigressdata2 SNAP-2020.02.05-19.27.38]$ ls
file1.txt  file2.txt  file3.txt  file4.txt

[ceisgrub@tigressdata2 SNAP-2020.02.05-19.27.38]$ pwd
/backups/tigress/c/ceisgrub/.snapshots/SNAP-2020.02.05-19.27.38

[ceisgrub@tigressdata2 SNAP-2020.02.05-19.27.38]$ cp file4.txt /tigress/ceisgrub

Note that the date in the .snapshot directory names is when the snapshot was taken. In the example above the user was able to find an accidentally deleted file and copy it to /tigress.

/home

It may be possible to recover files that were removed from /home/YourNetID. This must be done by someone in Research Computing. Please send an email to cses@princeton.edu and be sure to include the cluster name (e.g., Della, Tiger) and the path to the files (e.g., /home/aturing/project1/data).

/scratch/gpfs, /scratch/network, /scratch and /tmp

Files on the scratch filesystems are never backed up and can therefore never be recovered. Be sure to copy or move your important, non-volatile results to /tigress or /projects for long-term storage.