Reinstall. Data restore.

[SiarheiY]

Hello everybody,
Recently, due to some reasons I had to reinstall my OS from media: recovery feature during boot did not help.

The problem was that after start up I did not see anything on the desktop, even could not log in into the system.

Well, this is not the main problem..

Before that, I had created several logical drives for keeping my data with file system ext3. All partitions were mapped on directories under /media folder.
Firstly, I tried to use other folders, not under /media, but the drives were not displayed correctly, so I mapped them under /media.

So after reinstall all my data was erased; moreover, partition table was recreated.

Is it possible to recover partitions and data? Of course, I hope that physical sectors on drive are not reused, so the data was not erased.
Does SUSE has similar software on windows as partition Magic?

Second question is how to avoid such situation in the future?
Should I create windows partition and keep there all my valuable data, so in case of reinstall everything will be saved.

Thanks in advance.

[mikesd]

You could possibly find some software out there that can unformat or at least retrieve the data, but it's doubtful. The more you write to the drive, the better chance of the data being gone. A good place to keep your valuable data would be your /home dir. And if you have reinstall, don't format the /home partition.

There are some programs out there for forensic computing that may retrieve some of the data, I never really played with it much.

[SiarheiY]

You could possibly find some software out there that can unformat or at least retrieve the data, but it's doubtful. The more you write to the drive, the better chance of the data being gone. A good place to keep your valuable data would be your /home dir. And if you have reinstall, don't format the /home partition.

There are some programs out there for forensic computing that may retrieve some of the data, I never really played with it much.

Thanks mikesd,
but I did not format anything, during reinstall I received notification that all data will be deleted ; In MS Windows, in similar situation, the drive C will be formatted but it does not mean that other drives will be formated too.

Do you mean that it is save to keep data on /home partition, as it is not extendable partion and that is why will not be erased?

Is it possible to prevent partition table from being erased during reinstall?

[oz]

So after reinstall all my data was erased; moreover, partition table was recreated.

Is it possible to recover partitions and data? Of course, I hope that physical sectors on drive are not reused, so the data was not erased.
Does SUSE has similar software on windows as partition Magic?

Try using TestDisk and/or PhotoRec to recover the partitions and data. You can find them both on the Parted Magic LiveCD, and the documentation for both can be found on the TestDisk website.

[mikesd]

Thanks mikesd,
but I did not format anything, during reinstall I received notification that all data will be deleted ; In MS Windows, in similar situation, the drive C will be formatted but it does not mean that other drives will be formated too.

Do you mean that it is save to keep data on /home partition, as it is not extendable partion and that is why will not be erased?

Is it possible to prevent partition table from being erased during reinstall?

If data got deleted during an install, you formatted. You should keep /home on it's own mount point. It doesn't necessarily have to be it's own drive, but should be it's own mount point. That way when things go sideways you don't lose personal data.

You have to pay attention during the install and partitioning part and go under advanced, but yes you can keep the partition table and keep the data you want. Also, learn from this problem and back up back up back up!

Consider the mount points such as / and /boot and /etc and others as the same thing as C:\ drive or d:\ designation in windows.

[SiarheiY]

Thank you very much.
OK. What I understood, that it is better to keep pivotal data under /home directory, which should have unique mount point, plus creating regulary backup.

Personaly, I think it is better to read some administration, programming books in advance...

It will simplify work under Linux tremendously.

[mikesd]

Thank you very much.
OK. What I understood, that it is better to keep pivotal data under /home directory, which should have unique mount point, plus creating regulary backup.

Personaly, I think it is better to read some administration, programming books in advance...

It will simplify work under Linux tremendously.

Linux admin books are always a good investment.

But any way. /home stores all your user's data. / is called the root directory, not to be confused with /root which is roots home directory. Any non system data that you want to keep around should be in /home/whateveruser directory. Then if you have to reinstall later for whatever reason, you can chose what partitions to format or not format.

[eionmac]

Important! If you have a separate directory " /home" then you can upgrade linux operating systems* at major changes by just marking 'upgrade' if option is given, as that only overwrites your directory " /" leaving "/home" untouched and setting OS to use "/home" as normal. Thisis similar to a reinstall without re-formatting your home directory.
*openSUSE 11.0 onwards has this option.