Ubuntu

data recovery with CD

Asked by Julia Jantz

I am running Ubuntu 8.10. I downloaded the Ubuntu OS from the Internet and burned it to a DVD.
Is this a Live CD? How do I find out?
Can I reinstall Ubuntu without losing my data and pictures?
Can I access my data and pictures on my hard drive using the CD since I can not login with the Ubuntu that is installed?

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José Lou Chang (obake) said : 		#1

1) If the name of the CD/DVD image (iso) contains "desktop", then it is a LiveCD. Alternate CD is Textmode install CD.

2) If you had made a separate partition for your Home directory, then yes, your files are safe. Otherwise, make a backup.

3) Yes you can. You can access any hard drive from the Desktop CD or LiveCD.

The drive should have been detected, just go to Places menu and look for your drive.

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Tom (tom6) said : 		#2

https://help.ubuntu.com/community/DataRecovery

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Best Tom (tom6) said : 		#3

One way to find out if it can be used as a LiveCd is to see if you can bootup off it. Just stick it in the dvd-player on your machine and reboot. Hopefully you'll get to a menu with "Try Ubuntu without any changes to my machine" as the top and default option. Following this option should get you to a working desktop, we call this a LiveCd session & it should have an "install" icon somewhere up on the top left. If you have troubles with this here's a guide
https://help.ubuntu.com/community/BootFromCD

Oddly i tend to find i have more troubles with decent expensive blank dvd's for this than with the cheapest 'write once' they tend to sell in blocks of 10 in supermarkets! Perhaps dvd's burn faster or maybe i'm more reluctant to throw away a failed one.

You can access your hard-drive's data by going up to the top taskbar and click on "Places" one of the "media" should be your old Ubuntu's partition and you can navigate to your data from there
/home/usernames/documents
etc
I would copy the whole /home folder to either a Window partition or to an external drive or burn onto dvd's. Doing a dvd backup every few months or annually seems like a good plan anyway. Linus Torvalds said "Real men don't use backups - they ftp it and people across the world download it" lol, but most of us aren't writing the linux kernel. It might be worth making a new partition and copying your /home folder with all your data and settings onto a new partition.

You say that you can't login to your installed Ubuntu on the partition that's on your hard-drive? Is this because you have forgotten the password? or does the bootup only go as far as the menu with lots of Ubuntu options? or does it boot straight into Windows without giving you a chance to get to the Ubuntu? We can help you fix any of those problems and more such issues.

If you really need to reinstall then i have a neat trick but it's still worth backing up your /home to external drive or something, just in case it doesn't work properly for you ;)

Good luck and regards from
Tom :)

PS in linux a lot of apparently serious things are quite trivial to fix, if you get help from the right person or manage to find the answer yourself ;)

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Tom (tom6) said : 		#4

I meant the cheapest 'write once' cd's are often better for this than 'multi-session' dvd's and also i think Torvalds was being funny rather than being serious ;)

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Julia Jantz (jantzjulia) said : 		#5

Thanks Tom, that solved my question.

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Tom (tom6) said : 		#6

Thanks and congrats on fixing that. Nicely done :))
Welcome to lnux-land, especially the Ubuntu corner :)
Err, if you haven't yet done a full re-install and still want to then please post either a note in here, or to my email via "Contact user"
https://launchpad.net/~tomdavies04

I'm not sure why other people haven't found my neat trick that avoids overwriting everything. Probably the warning messages put them off trying it but i have used it quite a few times with only occasional mistakes when i was new to linux and all this and hadn't found the forums (or was too shy to use them)

Anyway, good luck and regards from
Tom :)

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Tom (tom6) said : 		#7

Hi :)

Have you been able to test the new Ubuntu 10.04 before it gets officially released?
http://www.ubuntulinux.org/testing/lucid/beta1
Trying it as a LiveCd or as an extra dual/multi-boot would be ideal. Developers and everyone are keen to try to iron out any problems before 10.04 gets officially released so you might find faster & more effective answers to your bug reports which would make 10.04 work better on your system for you

Thanks and regards from
Tom :)