Major stuff up and need expert advice or physical assistance

[antowan]

Short story.

Laptop with Windows XP and Ubuntu 10.04.

Installed Windows 7 and now Ubuntu is nowhere to be recovered...

Important data in home folder of Ubuntu installation.

Need the data recovered.

Who can assist. I am in Pretoria and willing to drive.... and pay...

 

[stricken]

did you install windows over ubuntu? Or on a separate partition? The former is irrecoverable (depending on whether the quick format box was ticked (if there even was such a thing) in win7 install. if it was a quick format, your data could still be there, but the only way to get at it will be to do a raw dump of the entire hard-drive, and manually reconstruct whats left of the old filesystem from the sectors. this will cost 3-10k at recovery specialist (which could include the price for a new hard drive after your old one has been "handled")

The latter (if installed ubuntu on a seperate partition) is fairly simple and i can reconfigure the boot sector for you for R100.

 

[|tera|]

Sent you a pm Antowan

 

[stricken]

sneaky.

 

[|tera|]

sneaky.

I don't want his money if that is what you are implying.

 

[Willie Trombone]

Teraside to the rescue
Even if it was clean formatted, some files may still be recoverable. The entire partition may still be there. Hope it goes well, keep us updated antowan.

 

[DrJohnZoidberg]

Teraside to the rescue
Even if it was clean formatted, some files may still be recoverable. The entire partition may still be there. Hope it goes well, keep us updated antowan.

Indeed, I've managed to recover files from a twice formatted drive.

 

[antowan]

****... thanks guys... checking PM now... will report back...

 

[MyWorld]

Indeed, I've managed to recover files from a twice formatted drive.

Not a Linux file system that had a format, that is a little bit more complex.

All you need to have for a temp fix is a LiveCD and a USB flash drive.

Boot up Ubuntu LiveCD, once it is booted you can use the file manager to mount your /home. Insert flash drive and copy everything over that needs rescuing.

Now you can just reinstall GRUB (there will be detailed documentation on this on the Ubuntu site) and you are set again.

 

[Bismuth]

Not a Linux file system that had a format, that is a little bit more complex.

All you need to have for a temp fix is a LiveCD and a USB flash drive.

Boot up Ubuntu LiveCD, once it is booted you can use the file manager to mount your /home. Insert flash drive and copy everything over that needs rescuing.

Now you can just reinstall GRUB (there will be detailed documentation on this on the Ubuntu site) and you are set again.

You can also just restore GRUB, I have successfully used SuperGRUB2 Diskin the past for this (provided the partition hasn't been formatted ofc).

B

 

[AnthIste]

Isn't this why when you install Windows/Linux in a dualboot configuration you install Windows first and Linux second? MS doesn't seem to acknowledge that other operating systems actually exist and are used by people, judging by their bootloader :/

 

[ponder]

did you install windows over ubuntu? Or on a separate partition?

So which is it?

If you installed to a separate partition all the happened is the MBR got overwritten so no GRUB. Use a livecd to get the data off.

If you overwrote the / or /home partition you might still be able to recover the data using TestDisk/Photorec