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Lost Files during upgrade to 12.04

Asked by jplatt

I just upgraded to 12.04 in this manner:
1. First I got a message on my 11.x machine that the 12.04 upgrade was available. I followed the prompts, downloaded and began the upgrade.
2. The upgrade went through all the steps but when it Restarted the system, it did not come back all the way. It hung when displaying the desktop. I got a blank black background, a row of blank(no type) silver icons in the launcher and no cursor. It froze and I had no control.
3. I tryed hard rebooting the system several times but it always ended up the same way with no ability to control the system.
4. I finally had to go to a windows machine, download 12.04 from ubuntu.com and burn a CD with the iso file. I used this to install 12.04 over again and all went well, except for one thing.... I lost all my data.... The install from the CD did not "repair" what I had downloaded, it seems to have written over it and destroyed my firefox bookmarks and one folder of data I had.

QUESTION: Do I have any way to regain my firefox bookmarks and the one file of data I lost??

I am not familiar with command line prompts in Ubuntu (or even how to get a "terminal" screen to enter command line prompts). If there is a way, I will need a little help with this stuff. Thanks in advance for any help that is possible.

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A-S-H-L-E-Y (ashley-cunl) said : 		#1

Check open file manager then goto /home to see if your old account is still there.

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jplatt (jeff-pvn-usa) said : 		#2

Ashley
I am not sure I went to correct place.
I went to the "Home" folder on the Launcher, and then to "File system".
In "File System" I then went to the "Home" folder whose property says its "Location" is /home
I only see the new identity in the /home folder.

However in the "File System", I see to files with the names:
initrd.img.old and vmlinuz.old

Can these be of any help to me?

Thanks very much.

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Barry Drake (b-drake) said : 		#3

If you only see the new account in /home then your install has reformatted your drive and there is little chance of getting data back. Take a look at the partitioning using gparted. Don't change anything. See what partitions exist. In a clean install you will see only one main partition and a swap partition. If there is a second linux partition you might see where it is mounted and use your file manager to look at it and see if your old home partition is there. If it is, I suggest that you back up your entire home partition from there and then do a complete clean install on the whole drive before restoring the data from your old home partition.

What you have will depend entirely on what you told the installer on the CD to do. If you said install alongside your old system, the above is what you might see. If you told it to use the entire hard drive, then I'm afraid you have lost your data.

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actionparsnip (andrew-woodhead666) said : 		#4

The data isn't lost as you will have made a backup if the data is important to you. No backup means the data is disposable to you.

When you see the blank desktop, press CTRL+ALT+F1, login and run:

killall -u $USER

Then log into the Unity2D session

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