Gave up waiting for root device.

[BurningSludge]

I got the message "Gave up waiting for root device after I rebooted an Ubuntu 10.04 system I thought I restored by unpacking a tar.gz at the base of the directory tree I made for backup purposes.

[BurningSludge]

I am not sure that this page gives you the best backup solution.
https://help.ubuntu.com/community/BackupYourSystem/TAR

I managed to extract my home folder and placed it in a vanilla install without having it break my system (even at boot up time).