How can I find files stored on my server?
This FAQ will help you to find your website files on your VPS.
Please note: this article was originally created for our previous generation of Virtual Private Servers. As such, these instructions may not be relevant to our current generation of Virtual Private Servers.
The instructions will show you some common directories you can check to try and find your website files.
If your servers disk has been attached to your VPS for you to retrieve your data you should be able to see it located as a secondary disk.
On a windows server this could be D: or any other drive name.
On a Linux based server this could be in numerous locations however will generally be called /oldserver/ or something very similar. To double check run the command df -h
If you can’t see the disk located in here then you may need to mount the disk. The below instructions cover 90% of setups however yours may vary slightly.
On a Linux based server run fdisk -l
This will print several lines of output and you need to look for: /dev/sdb3 or /dev/sdc3/
Run the command:
mkdir /oldserver/
mount -t ext4 -o loop,ro,noload /dev/vdb3 /oldserver/
On a windows based server if the drive is still not showing please contact our support teams to investigate further.
Once the drive is mounted correctly you can see all your data that has been recovered. The location of your data will be in different locations depending on your operating system and control panel and where the data was mounted to but generically it should be as below:
Linux Plesk
- Website files: /oldserver/var/www/vhosts
- Databases: /oldserver/var/lib/mysql
- Emails: /oldserver/var/qmail/mailnames
Linux cPanel
- Website files: /oldserver/home
- Databases: /oldserver/var/lib/mysql
- Emails: /oldserver/home
WindowsPlesk
- Website files: D:inetpub/li>
- Databases: D:Program Files (x86)ParallelsPleskDatabases
- Emails: D:Program Files (x86)ParallelsPleskMail Servers
If you have recovered your server from a partial backup, you can check to see if there are any backup files stored on your server using the locations listed above. Once you have found your files, take a Copy and use them to restore your website through your Plesk control panel.