What caused deleting contents of /overlay/upper?

[kgursu]

Hi.

After entering commands from here Swap file not mounting on boot (I used it for one drive, it gave bad i/o error.), the drive contents are destroyed and while using SSH connection with PuTTy, it advised me deleting contents of (possibly only files in, i remorse) /overlay/upper, but I deleted all folders in it. Possibly because of that, the device became like it reset.
Until then, even after hard and soft resets, the device doesn't accept any passwords on LuCI, although I set one on PuTTy, including the default password root.
Is the only option to survive from this reverting back to stock firmware and starting from scratch?

Thanks.

Note: My drive was partitioned as NTFS, so /dev/zero command option is for ext partitions. That might cause the problem...

[ahmar16]

You can always go for failsafe method and reset your password or even better reset your router.

[mk24]

What type of machine?

If this is a removable disk I suggest mounting it on a "big Linux" system to look for and possibly recover your files.

I/O error usually means a hardware failure though. (Do not run swap on a USB flash stick, it will wear out quickly.)

[kgursu]

The login issue was related to my browser, which is forcing me (with an extension HTTPS Everywhere from EFF.org) to use HTTPS sites. After installing SSL, the issue resolved.
Resetting the router was a must, but to what extent, I could not know, because of the browser affecting throughout the process.

Thank you...