Announcement

**d41** · Mar 03, 2008, 02:55 PM

Re: Very scared lost everything?

Can't you just boot off a linux live cd and pull all your files off and burn them to a cd or something?

**susanpenter** · Mar 03, 2008, 03:16 PM

Re: Very scared lost everything?

last time I used the CD it wouldn't mount the other partitions, also my Kodak printer will only work with XP so rather than having to reboot into XP I would have to take the files from my pc and print from my laptop meaning I would have to use my laptop all the time.

Unfortunately I didn't get a disk for windows only a partition installation which would be installed over when I install Kubunto again.

Hope this makes sense

Should memtest wall time still be happening after 1 hour 30?

**Qqmike** · Mar 03, 2008, 03:39 PM

Re: Very scared lost everything?

Memtest will run forever if you let it; lost of us run it for "10 tests" or more, 2 or 3 or even 8 hours.

Here's a verbal overview of some very basic recovery ideas -- see the PhotoRec site to try to recover photos, documents, etc. It worked well for me recently.
See links to the TestDisk & Photorec sitres--read their very good documentation. All free. Please post questions back here, as you've been doing:

Data Rescue Links & Comments & Tips
TestDisk -- PhotoRec -- Knoppix (or other Live CDs)
http://kubuntuforums.net/forums/inde...opic=3091847.0

Can you run any software diagnostics on the hard disk (e.g., Seagate's SeaTools)?

**Qqmike** · Mar 03, 2008, 03:40 PM

Re: Very scared lost everything?

and, maybe even good ol' Knoppix Live CD (free) can help you access/mount bad drives...that's what it's known for.

EDIT: Sorry -- Do NOT write anything to that drive! It may overwrite your documents!!!

**spotslayer** · Mar 03, 2008, 05:32 PM

Re: Very scared lost everything?

One thought would be to run fsck on the drives in question. Boot with a live CD. Don't mount these drives. You will need to know which partition and file system you want to recover. You can google fsck for all the options you have. (http://linux.die.net/man/8/fsck) Many others. It will be something like this when you run it.

fsck.ext3 /dev/sda?

David

**stealthbanana** · Mar 05, 2008, 05:56 AM

Re: Very scared lost everything?

There are many tools available to rescue lost partitions and data.

If you know what you are doing, use the cd from http://www.sysresccd.org/
a lot of it is down and dirty command line, so read the docs and be sure you know what to do. gpart would be the place to start as it will search the disc for old partitions and give you the option to restore them.

If you want a GUI, try helix from http://www.e-fense.com/helix/ which has rescued stuff for me that nothing else has even been able to see.

If you can, and depending how much you value the data misplaced (not lost, it will be recoverable), do a low level copy of the entire disc to another using dd. This will gove you a sandbox to play in if you are not sure of what to do without potentially loosing any data.

**Qqmike** · Mar 05, 2008, 06:12 AM

Re: Very scared lost everything?

Yes, what stealthbanana said.

TestDisk is another good one for recovering lost partitions. Helix Live CD (that has a special version of dd called dcfldd, used to copy a disk to another disk). dd_rescue.

**Fintan** · Mar 05, 2008, 06:24 AM

Re: Very scared lost everything?

OK I'm scared!

what did you do before all of this?

What flavor of kubuntu are you using?

What do you mean you couldn't mount your drives from a live cd (Kubuntu?)
How did you try to mount them?

The easiest way is to do kmenu->system settings>advanced->disks & files->administor mode->rightclick on the partition->edit->give it a mount point like /media/data (pics, music, etc).
Now enable those partitions and open them in konqueror.
If you stuff is still there then you are alright.

If that does not help, follow the advice given above.

Will the only option left be to use my Kubuntu live CD and use the whole disk to install it or is there a way of going into a partition manager whilst in live disk mode and seeing what is what.

What ever you do DO NOT do that.
At the install you will have a choice of using the manual partitioning method. Use that and point your / to your kubuntu partition, format it. If you have a separate /home point that partition to /home and DO NOT format!

Likewise you can chose all of you ather partitions, again DO NOT FORMAT!

I hope this helps a bit

**susanpenter** · Mar 05, 2008, 12:59 PM

Re: Very scared lost everything?

Well I've tried using the test disk photo_rec but all it recovered was millions of bits of data and jpeg's of windows software which swamped my system and caused so much mayhem I decided to reinstall Kubuntu! I shall give the Helix a go as mentioned above, if that fails I shall have to cut my losses. My most important recent docs had luckily just been e-mail to people with Gmail so I recovered them from there. It's really just my photos that I hadn't uploaded to any of my web spaces that I will miss the most as they are not replaceable - also my Teaching qualification paperwork etc.

Susan

**monte48lowes** · Mar 05, 2008, 01:56 PM

Re: Very scared lost everything?

Just for future reference, purchase an external USB hard drive. It is very simple to backup your home directory to the USB hard drive using rsync.

Here's how:

1) Plug in USB hard drive and let kubuntu mount it.
2) open konsole
3) cd /media/disk #this is the default directory
4) sudo mkdir backup.home
5) sudo rsync -av /home/ /media/backup.home/

6) when it's done verify that files have copied by browsing in dolphin/konqueror.

Mike