Data recovery

In scenarios like where the NovaOS files exists and are mis-formatted or saved in an undiscoverable location, there are still ways to 'recover' the data lost.

Directory search

Using the NovaOS smartsearch feature, you can simply search for the file name on the Nova Nav. This will search in all directories in your root.

Browsing the file system in text

Head to https://adthoughtsglobal.github.io/Nova-OS/bios.html, this page is a CLI interface for your NovaOS system. It's able to access all your files and data if your password is not set.

This only works with the account named 'Admin' with no password set.

You can either use the browser inspect window, or the terminal in the Nova Setup options menu to access the command interface of a select account with a password.

Contact experts in our discord if you require better chances of recovery.

NovaOS file system: Cheat Sheet

• The NovaOS file system or 'memory' is a JS Object with two keys, 'memory' and 'contentpool'.

• The 'memory' key has a value with another nested object, 'root'.

• 'root' has the structure of the entire filesystem, in which, subfolders are nested objects.

• every key in root, and its child objects are called 'items'

• 'items' can either be a folder or a file. You can tell them apart by looking at the end of its name

• folders, having nested items, will have a slash symbol (/) at its end.

• the names of files are file names, which has an extension at its end.

• The file extension defines its file type, it starts with a period symbol (.). (ex: .txt)

• These file items have more keys in them, they are 'id', 'metadata'.

• The ID, or the unique identifier string, is a random 12-character string used to tell files apart.

• Metadata includes more keys that the creator or the editor of the file defines.

• By default, NovaOS saves a 'dateTime' metadata with a UNIX timestamp.

• The 'contentpool' object, stores the more vital, content data of the file items in the file system.

• It contains keys that reference file IDs and values representing their content.

• The values are a string with two parts, the MIME part and the content seperated by a comma symbol (,).

• The MIME part starts with 'data:' followed by the abstract file type ('text', 'image' etc) followed by a slash symbol (/), followed by the specific file type ('json', 'png', 'webp' etc), followed by 'base64'.

• eg. MIME part:

  data:application/json;base64,

• The content part is a base64 encoded string of the raw file content.

Using the CLI to browse files

• use memory to view the tree

• use this snippet to view file contents using file ID

  await getFileContents(FILE_ID);

• use decodeBase64Content(FILE_CONTENTS); function to decode the base64 content of the file with the MIME part.