Data recovery and re-installation

[bradb-acc]

hello Linux forum...

What brings me here...

New to Linux and learning by trial and error...

Had Ubuntu 7.10 and upgraded to 8.04... but was not smooth.

have 2 drives and two copies of Ubuntu... sda & sdb drives..

well the first one didnt make it but success on the second drive

However... had a update go bad...

The short story is that now im missing system files on both drives due to a forced fsck on both 8.04drives... I can see files and folders on both from the Live session user on the Ubuntu 8.04 install CD Don't want to loose this data files and folders... whats my next step... will the partioning part of the new install wipeout my files...

Thanks for all the help and lessions
-Brad

[devils casper]

Hi and Welcome !

Use one HD as data storage and do fresh install in other. First of all, boot up from Ubuntu CD, mount partitions of both HDs and copy data from one HD to another. Unplug data HD and Install Ubuntu in other HD.
You can resize partitions using Gparted Partition Manager. Its available in Ubuntu CD. Nothing will go wrong with data unless you format partitions.
I would suggest you to post output of sudo fdisk -l command here.

[bradb-acc]

ubuntu@ubuntu:~$ sudo fdisk -l

Disk /dev/sda: 160.0 GB, 160041885696 bytes
255 heads, 63 sectors/track, 19457 cylinders
Units = cylinders of 16065 * 512 = 8225280 bytes
Disk identifier: 0x0000d263

Device Boot Start End Blocks Id System
/dev/sda1 * 1 19082 153276133+ 83 Linux
/dev/sda2 19083 19457 3012187+ 5 Extended
/dev/sda5 19083 19457 3012156 82 Linux swap / Solaris

Disk /dev/sdb: 160.0 GB, 160041885696 bytes
255 heads, 63 sectors/track, 19457 cylinders
Units = cylinders of 16065 * 512 = 8225280 bytes
Disk identifier: 0x0000d263

Device Boot Start End Blocks Id System
/dev/sdb1 * 1 19081 153268101 83 Linux
/dev/sdb2 19082 19457 3020220 5 Extended
/dev/sdb5 19082 19457 3020188+ 82 Linux swap / Solaris
ubuntu@ubuntu:~$

[devils casper]

Both HDs have same Partition Structure and size. Pick any, save all data in it and install Ubuntu in Other HD.
I would suggest you to create three or more partitions this time.

1. ext3, 15GB, /
2. ext3, assign as much space as you like, /home
3. SWAP, 1GB is more than enough
4. ext3 ( or NTFS if you are planning to dual boot ) for data sharing.

You can create 3 Primary, 1 Extended and a lot of Logical Partitions ( around 11 or more ) inside Extended partition.

[i92guboj]

This is why it is a good idea to keep /home mounted on a separate partition. It makes the system administration much easier.

[bradb-acc]

Right on...

errr ummm... sounds great...

Can you type out the terminal codes to make this happen...

I'd like to have /home in its on partition and Ubuntu in its own

The hard drive with the most used disk space is the one I'm most concerned about saving the data from.

Does having a Virtual BOX program containing Windoze XP have any consideration for partition disk space or Swap file size?

I'll just cut and paste what you tell me to do in the terminal console OK?

[devils casper]

The hard drive with the most used disk space is the one I'm most concerned about saving the data from.

You have to mount partitions and tell us which HD is occupying most of disk space.
Open Terminal and execute this

mkdir sda1 sdb1
sudo mount -t ext3 /dev/sda1  sda1
sudo mount -t ext3 /dev/sdb1  sdb1
df -h

Post output here. First of all, we will back up data to one of the disk.

[bradb-acc]

gotcha... great...

drag n drop in nautilus (sudo) or from the terminal...

and what folders other than /home is critical

PS need to save Firefox Thunderbird; Mozilla profile stuff...
on and copy paste hidden files and what about permission issues...

[devils casper]

There is no need to create any other separate partition unless you are running Server.
Copy .mozilla folder from /home/user_name and look for .thuderbird folder too. I am not a thunderbird user but AFAIK, it creates .thunderbird folder too. Copy both folders. Make sure to click 'Show Hidden Files' option in Nautilus Menu.

How much RAM do you have?

[bradb-acc]

my current configuration

output: df -h

ubuntu@ubuntu:~$ df -h
Filesystem Size Used Avail Use% Mounted on
tmpfs 506M 16M 490M 4% /lib/modules/2.6.24-16-generic/volatile
tmpfs 506M 16M 490M 4% /lib/modules/2.6.24-16-generic/volatile
varrun 506M 100K 506M 1% /var/run
varlock 506M 0 506M 0% /var/lock
udev 506M 64K 506M 1% /dev
devshm 506M 368K 506M 1% /dev/shm
tmpfs 506M 2.3M 504M 1% /tmp
gvfs-fuse-daemon 506M 101M 405M 20% /home/ubuntu/.gvfs
/dev/sdb1 144G 41G 96G 30% /media/disk
/dev/sda1 144G 27G 111G 20% /media/disk-1
ubuntu@ubuntu:~$