I did something stupid:
/trunk/vmware$ du -h svn
6,1G svn
/trunk/vmware$ sudo mkdir -p /data/vmware
/trunk/vmware$ (sudo tar cf - svn) | (sudo cd /data/vmware; sudo tar xf -)
sudo: cd: command not found
^C^C^C/trunk/vmware$ du -h /trunk/vmware/svn/
3,5G /trunk/vmware/svn/
Not only was my directory not copied, but it was damaged in such a way that I lost 3 GB. The virtual machine does not start of course. Is there any chance I can recover the data. I have Ubuntu 14.04 LTS with ext4.