Ubuntu
ubiquity package

Saving info from failed hardware

Asked by Patrick Quick

I had a board failure on a perfectly operational Ubuntu 11.10 system.

I do not think there I is anything wrong with the hard drive.

 If I get new hardware, do I want to attempt to boot off that drive and let it find the new hardware or would it be better to simply do a bare metal install and try to get the data off the old drive once the new system is working?

Will I have rights issues getting data off the old drive?

I do have the root password and have no problem reusing it on the new install if that simplifies things.

As always, thanks for any help!

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mycae
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mycae (mycae) said : 		#1

Most of the time, I have been able to replace components, and not bothered with the reinstall. I just plugged the HD into the system and off it went.

If you do need to get the data off the drive, remember that the permissions are enforced by the running OS, so provided you have permissions in your new OS, you will be able to retrieve the data from the old drive. You may need to use the administrator mode however, as sometimes user ids do not match up.

Eg, if you were running ubuntu, you would launch your filemanager with administrative rights with

gksudo nautilus

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Patrick Quick (quickvfr) said : 		#2

That is kind of my experience too except this will be motherboard and all the related changes with that, processor and RAM. Maybe video too. Power supply blew a bunch of stuff. Thanks. Does basically changing the machine change your opinion?

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Best mycae (mycae) said : 		#3

> Does basically changing the machine change your opinion?

Only if you are changing CPU architecture (32 -> 64 or vice versa), or if your first attempt at booting doesn't work out (eg video drivers). The video problem is solvable without reinstalling, but it may be easier just to reinstall anyway.

The CPU architecture problem is not solvable if going from 32->64, and flat out wont work. The other way will give slightly reduced performance (from 64->32) anyway and also limited ram access, so its probably worth the break.

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Patrick Quick (quickvfr) said : 		#4

Perfect. I am wanting to use the AMD64 build which is what I was using anyway. I will post the results once I get the machine put back together. Thanks mycae! Very much appreciated...

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Patrick Quick (quickvfr) said : 		#5

OK. It booted perfectly from the old hard drive with a new motherboard, processor and RAM. Because video has always been an issue, I did use a newer version of the NVidea video card I had on the old machine so there were no issues there. As always, thanks for the help. You have to love a 5 minute solution. With Windows I would have spent half the day reinstalling and upgrading and registering AND lost all of my data. Linux is a wonderful thing!

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Patrick Quick (quickvfr) said : 		#6

Thanks mycae, that solved my question.