Ubuntu

Data recovery

Asked by Tristan Biddle

I was recently getting heavy noise coming from my tower, so I looked down inside and it appeared to be the fan on my video card trying to boot up. So I tried to remove the card and see if that was in fact the problem. Well in order to do that I stuck a nail file in there and touched something inside and when I did that, the computer turned on and then I got the awesome MISSING OPERATING SYSTEM error message. Ran the diagnostics and they were all clean, plugged the drive into another computer that I have setup next to my main one and when I pulled the drive up through the My Computer folder I could not access the data on the drive. The good news is that the secondary computer recognized the drive and that it was 1.28 Terabytes but when I tried to access the drive I repetitively got a message saying "Drive is Not Formatted.... Would You Like to Format Now? (Yes) or (No)" so of course I hit no so that I could attempt to recover the files in a different way. Since this I have determined that the best thing to do would be to create a boot disk with either the Ubuntu or Knoppix operating system on it and boot from there because I am pretty sure that Ubuntu does not care what the boot sectors look like in my Windows Vista OS that has the Windows 7 upgrade on it.

If I am correct and there seems to be no other solution then my next question is how do I create the Ubuntu boot disk and once I boot up the Ubuntu OS how do I locate my old files and transfer them to either my secondary computer or to an External 500gb HD. Thanks for any direction on this one guys!

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Marc Stewart
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Best Marc Stewart (marc.stewart) said : 		#1

The main Ubuntu download page has all the information you need to burn a disc and run it as a live CD.
http://www.ubuntu.com/desktop/get-ubuntu/download

Although you can access your hard drive from the Places menu, you'll need a recovery program to attempt the data recovery. There are actually various live CDs specifically for attempting data recovery. One of these may be more appropriate than an Ubuntu live CD for you.

Despite your best attempts, you may find that some or all data is unrecoverable. If a file is important to you, make sure you always have a backup. And don't go sticking things where they don't belong.

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Tristan Biddle (tbiddle) said : 		#2

Thank you for responding to my first post. Ok I have Ubuntu running from the boot cd on my computer that has the 1.28Tb drive installed on it that I am trying to recover files off of. If anyone could point me in a direction as to what program or utility I will need to download/use to recover files off of my Windows OS through Ubuntu then please feel free to send me those suggests. This is very appreciated because I do not know where to go from here. The good news though is that I do have Ubuntu up and running on the computer that has the Missing operating system error.

Any directions or suggestions are appreciated

Revision history for this message
Tristan Biddle (tbiddle) said : 		#3

Thank you for responding to my first post. Ok I have Ubuntu running from the boot cd on my computer that has the 1.28Tb drive installed on it that I am trying to recover files off of. If anyone could point me in a direction as to what program or utility I will need to download/use to recover files off of my Windows OS through Ubuntu then please feel free to send me those suggests. This is very appreciated because I do not know where to go from here. The good news though is that I do have Ubuntu up and running on the computer that has the Missing operating system error.

Any directions or suggestions are appreciated

Revision history for this message
Tristan Biddle (tbiddle) said : 		#4

Thank you for responding to my first post. Ok I have Ubuntu running from the boot cd on my computer that has the 1.28Tb drive installed on it that I am trying to recover files off of. If anyone could point me in a direction as to what program or utility I will need to download/use to recover files off of my Windows OS through Ubuntu then please feel free to send me those suggests. This is very appreciated because I do not know where to go from here. The good news though is that I do have Ubuntu up and running on the computer that has the Missing operating system error.

Any directions or suggestions are appreciated

Revision history for this message
Tristan Biddle (tbiddle) said : 		#5

Thanks Marc Stewart, that solved my question.