OS6 now works on x86 Legacy WARNING: NO NTGR SUPPORT!

darshan wrote:
I am knowledgeable enough to know that the data is still there, as no low level formatting has happened. But I am not sure if there is an easier way than a proper data recovery process to get this information back.

I'm afraid that assumption is a little wrong.

As far as I could tell, from the first boot of 6.x a new btrfs filesystem is created on your drives. Since btrfs is a totally different filesystem from ext* (which 4.x used), it would have had to re-format the disk table/inode structure to suit the new filesystem. That is a data destructive operation - unless (and i'm no expert on this subject) btrfs does "lazy" init of it's filesystem elements (ie, it initialises them as it begins to use the space).

However, even with the lazy init (if btrfs does indeed do that, which remains to be seen...) the filesystem superblock(s) will have been over-written making them un-mountable as the old ext* filesystem. Also given the OS6 init process puts a load of stuff on the disks, depending on where your data was located on those disks (in a physical sense), it may have also been over-written already.

In short, you are unlikely to recover any data by going back to 4.x; and even if you are, it's going to need forensic data-recovery tools, a truck load of desire and a metric shit-tonne of time to do so.

Sorry to say it, but unless you've got £4m in bitcoins on that disk, you're better off having a few shots of your favourite tipple and cutting your losses.