How can I undo git reset --hard HEAD 1

Question

Is it possible to undo the changes caused by the following command  If so  how   git reset --hard HEAD 1

User · Answer

My problem is almost similar  I have uncommitted files before I enter git reset --hard   Thankfully  I managed to skip all these resources  After I noticed that I can just undo  ctrl-z    I just want to add this to all of the answers above   Note  Its not possible to ctrl-z unopened files    How can I undo git reset --hard HEAD 1  Undo git reset --hard with uncommitted files in the staging area Recovering added file after doing git reset --hard HEAD  Medium article  How To  Recover From a Git Hard Reset  Or  This is Why We Probably Shouldn   t but Totally Can Have Nice Things

User · Answer

In most cases  yes   Depending on the state your repository was in when you ran the command  the effects of git reset --hard can range from trivial to undo  to basically impossible   Below I have listed a range of different possible scenarios  and how you might recover from them   All my changes were committed  but now the commits are gone   This situation usually occurs when you run git reset with an argument  as in git reset --hard HEAD   Don t worry  this is easy to recover from   If you just ran git reset and haven t done anything else since  you can get back to where you were with this one-liner   git reset --hard   1    This resets your current branch whatever state it was in before the last time it was modified  in your case  the most recent modification to the branch would be the hard reset you are trying to undo    If  however  you have made other modifications to your branch since the reset  the one-liner above won t work  Instead  you should run git reflog  lt branchname gt  to see a list of all recent changes made to your branch  including resets   That list will look something like this   7c169bd master  0   reset  moving to HEAD  3ae5027 master  1   commit  Changed file2 7c169bd master  2   commit  Some change 5eb37ca master  3   commit  initial   Initial commit   Find the operation in this list that you want to  undo   In the example above  it would be the first line  the one that says  reset  moving to HEAD    Then copy the representation of the commit before  below  that operation  In our case  that would be master  1   or 3ae5027  they both represent the same commit   and run git reset --hard  lt commit gt  to reset your current branch back to that commit    I staged my changes with git add  but never committed  Now my changes are gone   This is a bit trickier to recover from  git does have copies of the files you added  but since these copies were never tied to any particular commit you can t restore the changes all at once  Instead  you have to locate the individual files in git s database and restore them manually  You can do this using git fsck   For details on this  see Undo git reset --hard with uncommitted files in the staging area   I had changes to files in my working directory that I never staged with git add  and never committed  Now my changes are gone   Uh oh  I hate to tell you this  but you re probably out of luck  git doesn t store changes that you don t add or commit to it  and according to the documentation for git reset      --hard      Resets the index and working tree  Any changes to tracked files in the working tree since  lt commit gt  are discarded    It s possible that you might be able to recover your changes with some sort of disk recovery utility or a professional data recovery service  but at this point that s probably more trouble than it s worth

User · Answer

If you have not yet garbage collected your repository  e g  using git repack -d or git gc  but note that garbage collection can also happen automatically   then your commit is still there      it s just no longer reachable through the HEAD   You can try to find your commit by looking through the output of git fsck --lost-found   Newer versions of Git have something called the  reflog   which is a log of all changes that are made to the refs  as opposed to changes that are made to the repository contents   So  for example  every time you switch your HEAD  i e  every time you do a git checkout to switch branches  that will be logged  And  of course  your git reset also manipulated the HEAD  so it was also logged  You can access older states of your refs in a similar way that you can access older states of your repository  by using an   sign instead of a    like git reset HEAD  1    It took me a while to understand what the difference is between HEAD  1  and HEAD 1  so here is a little explanation   git init git commit --allow-empty -mOne git commit --allow-empty -mTwo git checkout -b anotherbranch git commit --allow-empty -mThree git checkout master   This changes the HEAD  but not the repository contents git show HEAD 1     gt  One git show HEAD  1      gt  Three git reflog   So  HEAD 1 means  go to the commit before the commit that HEAD currently points at   while HEAD  1  means  go to the commit that HEAD pointed at before it pointed at where it currently points at    That will easily allow you to find your lost commit and recover it

User · Answer

Before answering lets add some background  explaining what is this HEAD  First of all what is HEAD  HEAD is simply a reference to the current commit  latest  on the current branch  There can only be a single HEAD at any given time   excluding git worktree  The content of HEAD is stored inside  git HEAD and it contains the 40 bytes SHA-1 of the current commit   detached HEAD If you are not on the latest commit - meaning that HEAD is pointing to a prior commit in history its called detached HEAD   On the command line it will look like this- SHA-1 instead of the branch name since the HEAD is not pointing to the the tip of the current branch   A few options on how to recover from a detached HEAD   git checkout git checkout  lt commit id gt  git checkout -b  lt new branch gt   lt commit id gt  git checkout HEAD X    x is the number of commits t go back  This will checkout new branch pointing to the desired commit  This command will checkout to a given commit  At this point you can create a branch and start to work from this point on    Checkout a given commit     Doing so will result in a  detached HEAD  which mean that the  HEAD    is not pointing to the latest so you will need to checkout branch   in order to be able to update the code  git checkout  lt commit-id gt     create a new branch forked to the given commit git checkout -b  lt branch name gt    git reflog You can always use the reflog as well  git reflog  will display any change which updated the HEAD and checking out the desired reflog entry will set the HEAD back to this commit  Every time the HEAD is modified there will be a new entry in the reflog git reflog git checkout HEAD        This will get you back to your desired commit   git reset HEAD --hard  lt commit id gt   quot Move quot  your head back to the desired commit    This will destroy any local modifications    Don t do it if you have uncommitted work you want to keep  git reset --hard 0d1d7fc32    Alternatively  if there s work to keep  git stash git reset --hard 0d1d7fc32 git stash pop   This saves the modifications  then reapplies that patch after resetting    You could get merge conflicts  if you ve modified things which were   changed since the commit you reset to    Note   Since Git 2 7  you can also use the git rebase --no-autostash as well     git revert  lt sha-1 gt   quot Undo quot  the given commit or commit range  The reset command will  quot undo quot  any changes made in the given commit  A new commit with the undo patch will be commited while the original commit will remain in the history as well    add new commit with the undo of the original one    the  lt sha-1 gt  can be any commit s  or commit range git revert  lt sha-1 gt    This schema illustrate which command does what  As you can see there reset  amp  amp  checkout modify the HEAD

User · Answer

I ve just did a hard reset on wrong project  What saved my life was Eclipse s local history  IntelliJ Idea is said to have one  too  and so may your editor  it s worth checking    Eclipse help topic on Local History http   wiki eclipse org FAQ Where is the workspace local history stored 3F

User · Answer

git reflog and back to the last HEAD 6a56624  HEAD - gt  master  HEAD  0   reset  moving to HEAD 3 1a9bf73 HEAD  1   commit  add changes in model generate binary

User · Answer

Example of IRL case     git fsck --lost-found  Checking object directories  100   256 256   done  Checking objects  100   3 3   done  dangling blob 025cab9725ccc00fbd7202da543f556c146cb119 dangling blob 84e9af799c2f5f08fb50874e5be7fb5cb7aa7c1b dangling blob 85f4d1a289e094012819d9732f017c7805ee85b4 dangling blob 8f654d1cd425da7389d12c17dd2d88d318496d98 dangling blob 9183b84bbd292dcc238ca546dab896e073432933 dangling blob 1448ee51d0ea16f259371b32a557b60f908d15ee dangling blob 95372cef6148d980ab1d7539ee6fbb44f5e87e22 dangling blob 9b3bf9fb1ee82c6d6d5ec9149e38fe53d4151fbd dangling blob 2b21002ca449a9e30dbb87e535fbd4e65bac18f7 dangling blob 2fff2f8e4ea6408ac84a8560477aa00583002e66 dangling blob 333e76340b59a944456b4befd0e007c2e23ab37b dangling blob b87163c8def315d40721e592f15c2192a33816bb dangling blob c22aafb90358f6bf22577d1ae077ad89d9eea0a7 dangling blob c6ef78dd64c886e9c9895e2fc4556e69e4fbb133 dangling blob 4a71f9ff8262701171d42559a283c751fea6a201 dangling blob 6b762d368f44ddd441e5b8eae6a7b611335b49a2 dangling blob 724d23914b48443b19eada79c3eb1813c3c67fed dangling blob 749ffc9a412e7584245af5106e78167b9480a27b dangling commit f6ce1a403399772d4146d306d5763f3f5715cb5a     lt - it s this one     git show f6ce1a403399772d4146d306d5763f3f5715cb5a  commit f6ce1a403399772d4146d306d5763f3f5715cb5a Author  Stian Gudmundsen H  iland  lt stian Stians-Mac-mini local gt  Date    Wed Aug 15 08 41 30 2012  0200       MY COMMIT MESSAGE IS DISPLAYED HERE   diff --git a Some file b Some file new file mode 100644 index 0000000  15baeba ---  dev null     b Some file  THE WHOLE COMMIT IS DISPLAYED HERE      git rebase f6ce1a403399772d4146d306d5763f3f5715cb5a  First  rewinding head to replay your work on top of it    Fast-forwarded master to f6ce1a403399772d4146d306d5763f3f5715cb5a

User · Answer

The answer is hidden in the detailed response above  you can simply do     gt  git reset --hard HEAD  1     See the output of git reflog show

User · Answer

Pat Notz is correct   You can get the commit back so long as it s been within a few days   git only garbage collects after about a month or so unless you explicitly tell it to remove newer blobs     git init Initialized empty Git repository in  git     echo  testing reset   gt  file1   git add file1   git commit -m  added file1  Created initial commit 1a75c1d  added file1  1 files changed  1 insertions     0 deletions -   create mode 100644 file1    echo  added new file   gt  file2   git add file2   git commit -m  added file2  Created commit f6e5064  added file2  1 files changed  1 insertions     0 deletions -   create mode 100644 file2    git reset --hard HEAD  HEAD is now at 1a75c1d    added file1    cat file2 cat  file2  No such file or directory    git reflog 1a75c1d    HEAD  0   reset --hard HEAD   updating HEAD f6e5064    HEAD  1   commit  added file2    git reset --hard f6e5064 HEAD is now at f6e5064    added file2    cat file2 added new file   You can see in the example that the file2 was removed as a result of the hard reset  but was put back in place when I reset via the reflog

User · Answer

git reflog   Find your commit sha in the list then copy and paste it into this command     git cherry-pick  lt the sha gt

User · Answer

It is possible to recover it if Git hasn t garbage collected yet   Get an overview of dangling commits with fsck     git fsck --lost-found dangling commit b72e67a9bb3f1fc1b64528bcce031af4f0d6fcbf   Recover the dangling commit with rebase     git rebase b72e67a9bb3f1fc1b64528bcce031af4f0d6fcbf

User · Answer

What you want to do is to specify the sha1 of the commit you want to restore to   You can get the sha1 by examining the reflog  git reflog  and then doing   git reset --hard  lt sha1 of desired commit gt   But don t wait too long    after a few weeks git will eventually see that commit as unreferenced and delete all the blobs

User · Answer

as far as i know  --hard will discards uncommitted changes  Since these aren t tracked by git  but you can undo the discarded commit     git reflog   will lists   b0d059c HEAD  0   reset  moving to HEAD 1 4bac331 HEAD  1   commit  added level introduction            where 4bac331 is the discarded commit   Now just move the head to that commit      git reset --hard 4bac331

User · Answer

I know this is an old thread    but as many people are searching for ways to undo stuff in Git  I still think it may be a good idea to continue giving tips here   When you do a  git add  or move anything from the top left to the bottom left in git gui the content of the file is stored in a blob and the file content is possible to recover from that blob     So it is possible to recover a file even if it was not committed but it has to have been added   git init   echo hello  gt  gt  test txt   git add test txt     Now the blob is created but it is referenced by the index so it will no be listed with git fsck until we reset  So we reset      git reset --hard   git fsck     you will get a dangling blob ce013625030ba8dba906f756967f9e9ca394464a    git show ce01362     will give you the file content  hello  back  To find unreferenced commits I found a tip somewhere suggesting this     gitk --all   git log -g --pretty format  h      I have it as a tool in git gui and it is very handy

User · Answer

Made a tiny script to make it slightly easier to find the commit one is looking for   git fsck --lost-found   grep commit   cut -d     -f 3   xargs -i git show        egrep   commit  Date    Yes  it can be made considerably prettier with awk or something like it  but it s simple and I just needed it  Might save someone else 30 seconds

User · Answer

If you are using a JetBrains IDE  anything IntelliJ based   you can recover even your uncommited changes via their  Local History  feature   Right-click on your top-level directory in your file tree  find  Local History  in the context menu  and choose  Show History   This will open up a view where your recent edits can be found  and once you have found the revision you want to go back to  right click on it and click  Revert

User · Answer

If you re really lucky  like I was  you can go back into your text editor and hit  undo    I know that s not really a proper answer  but it saved me half a day s work so hopefully it ll do the same for someone else

User · Answer

This has saved my life   https   medium com  CarrieGuss how-to-recover-from-a-git-hard-reset-b830b5e3f60c  Basically you need to run   for blob in   git fsck --lost-found   awk     2       blob      print  3        do git cat-file -p  blob  gt   blob txt  done   Then manually going through the pain to re-organise your files to the correct structure   Takeaway  Never use git reset --hard if you dont completely 100  understand how it works  best not to use it

[git] How can I undo git reset --hard HEAD~1?

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