Restore from lost+found

You can't find the original name and location of a file in /lost+found because that's what lost+found is about: it's where fsck puts fragments of files that it hasn't been able to attach anywhere in the directory tree. If the location was known, fsck would have left the file where it was meant to be.

It's theoretically possible that fsck could have only partial information, such as the file name but not the directory location, but that doesn't happen with typical filesystem.

You may be able to find clues in the file itself. The file command will at least tell you what kind of file it is (if it recognizes it). Some files carry additional information inside; for example JPEG and TIFF images may contain EXIF data, MP3 files may contain ID3 tags, etc.


Last time I had to do that - many years ago - you had to guess based on file content. I doubt there is a better way today.

The 'file' program can help here since it will give you an idea of the type of data, so you can use this to view the files appropriately for a start.