How can I verify if I've lost my FC3 system?

**jwf** · 09-03-2005

Oh Man, I think I've wiped out month's of configuring Linux.
I had to reload Windows XP because the registry got damaged and the administrator id was deleted. (what else is new?)

I had Linux FC3 loaded on hda1.
I had Windows XP loaded on hdb2.
I reloaded Windows XP on the "D:\" drive, and fully expected my Grub.conf would need some update.
I thought I'd add another OS - SUSE 9.1 on hda3 (lots of free space), but when Yast showed me what it sees, I did not see the Linux FC3 data on hda1.
I've booted with Knoppix and if I open a shell and navigate to /dev/hda1, i get a message that says "not a directory".
If I do a "ls -l" in /dev, I show:

Code:

root@ttyp1&#91;dev&#93;# ls -l hda*
brw-------  1 root root 3,  0 May  5  1998 hda
brw-------  1 root root 3,  1 May  5  1998 hda1
brw-------  1 root root 3, 10 May  5  1998 hda10

This display does not even show hda2 & hda3

An fdisk displays:

Code:

Disk /dev/hda&#58; 163.9 GB, 163928604672 bytes
255 heads, 63 sectors/track, 19929 cylinders
Units = cylinders of 16065 * 512 = 8225280 bytes

   Device Boot      Start         End      Blocks   Id  System
/dev/hda1   *           1        4079    32764536    c  W95 FAT32 &#40;LBA&#41;
/dev/hda2            4080        4092      104422+  83  Linux
/dev/hda3            4093       19929   127210702+  8e  Linux LVM

Disk /dev/hdb&#58; 40.0 GB, 40027029504 bytes
255 heads, 63 sectors/track, 4866 cylinders
Units = cylinders of 16065 * 512 = 8225280 bytes

   Device Boot      Start         End      Blocks   Id  System
/dev/hdb1               1           4       32098+  de  Dell Utility
/dev/hdb2   *           5        4866    39054015    7  HPFS/NTFS

Is there anything else I can do to verify my Linux data is or is not there?

Thanks

**bryansmith** · 09-03-2005

Have you tried mounting the partition to get at the data?

Bryan

**bryansmith** · 09-03-2005

*Sorry, this was accidentaly posted twice*

Bryan

**jwf** · 09-03-2005

Hi Brian, Thanks for your reply.
When I saw your message, I knew I was having a brain check (I was not looking for the data in the right place) (this is what can happen dealing with windows at 2am).
So, navigating to /mnt/hda1 and looking for data there,I see a few files files i recognize, but should I not 'see' my Linux file structure or is it compressed?

**bryansmith** · 09-03-2005

You only see some of them? That's weird. You sure you are looking in the right place again

? What can/can you not see?

Bryan

**jwf** · 09-03-2005

This is my output:

Code:

oot@ttyp1&#91;hda1&#93;# ls -l
total 121376
-rwxrwxrwx  1 knoppix knoppix     43008 Aug  3 09&#58;26 1968_1979.doc
drwxrwxrwx  2 knoppix knoppix     16384 May 12 08&#58;17 83b05e47b4efe2484046039c
-rwxrwxrwx  1 knoppix knoppix     38400 Aug 28 10&#58;23 Res.doc
-rwxrwxrwx  1 knoppix knoppix       467 Sep  1 09&#58;06 RES.doc.lnk
drwxrwxrwx  2 knoppix knoppix     16384 Mar 19 10&#58;15 Recycled
drwxrwxrwx  3 knoppix knoppix     16384 Mar 19 10&#58;15 System Volume Information
-rwxrwxrwx  1 knoppix knoppix         0 Sep  2 23&#58;54 autoexec.bat
-rwxrwxrwx  1 knoppix knoppix     44032 May 12 20&#58;12 bres.doc
-rwxrwxrwx  1 knoppix knoppix       194 Sep  2 23&#58;46 boot.ini
-rwxrwxrwx  1 knoppix knoppix         0 Sep  2 23&#58;54 config.sys
drwxrwxrwx  3 knoppix knoppix     16384 Sep  3 01&#58;54 dell
-r-xr-xr-x  1 knoppix knoppix         0 Sep  2 23&#58;54 io.sys
-rwxrwxrwx  1 knoppix knoppix   3172983 Oct 19  2004 jedit.jar
-r-xr-xr-x  1 knoppix knoppix         0 Sep  2 23&#58;54 msdos.sys
-r-xr-xr-x  1 knoppix knoppix     45124 Aug 23  2001 ntdetect.com
-r-xr-xr-x  1 knoppix knoppix    222368 Aug 23  2001 ntldr
-rwxrwxrwx  1 knoppix knoppix 120586240 Sep  2 23&#58;31 pagefile.sys

The files I see there seem to ones I placed there while I was booted up in Windows in the last couple of days. Because it was a FAT32 ssytem, I could store data there and retreive it while in Linux.
hda1 should be 32 gig. This listing does not show that much data.

hda2 shows zero data with the 'ls' command.
hda3 shows zero data. with the 'ls' command.

Looking at my previous 'fdisk', hda3 should contain all my free space
and hda2 should contain my grub.conf file.

If I use Knoppix graphical screen to display hda2, I see a 'grub' partition, with grub.conf in it so grub seems to be there.

If I use the graphical screen to view hda1, I see 'dell' files. I've got an uneasy feeling when I was trying some recovery with a Dell recovery disk, it just installed itself over my FC3 Linux data files.

EDITED: Further inspection of the data on hda1 shows that some log files were produced by my Norton disk. I tried to reload Norton on my windows partition. I have no idea how the data ended up overwriting my Fedora Core 3 data. (the Norton reload failed too).

Well, I'm now off to load SUSE 9.1 I will load this on what I think is the last of my free space (hda3).

**jwf** · 09-04-2005

Well, Here I am up under SUSE 9.1. This install was painless. Now I'm off to see what works (DVD, CDR, CD r/w, scanner, Printer, audio, dual boot). ADSL worked right off the bat.

Not too sure about this browser,(Konqueror),, got used to Firefox, but we'll try this one for now.

Thanks Brian for your help. I actually loaded SuSe in hda1, overwriting anything that was put there in error by Norton.

Cheers!

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How can I verify if I've lost my FC3 system?

Finished ,mystery not really solved but Linux back up sucessfully!

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