power failure during upgrade, options for reinstall, data recovery

[westonmonroe]

Hello. My netbook (asus 701) ran out of power while my system was upgrading the kernel and now it will not boot up. I don't mind reinstalling from a usb drive but want to save some data and am interested in any insight or recommendations on how to go about doing this. I was thinking trying to boot a light-weight OS from a usb drive and hopefully being able to browse the HD and copy stuff I want back to the USB drive. Any thoughts.

Gratefully...

[mörgæs]

Yes, booting with a live Linux, being Ubuntu or another, is a good way of rescuing files.

I have several times rescued files from a doomed Windows drive using Ubuntu, and afterwards the owner said 'never again' and installed Ubuntu :-)