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mostwanted
May 23rd, 2006, 03:07 PM
I just found out that I've lost everything on my computer. Everything. Every piece of code I've ever written (websites too), every single photo I've taken, every song I've ripped (3000 tracks), every image I've made, every single school report or essay I've written (a few weeks from now I'll have to take my Physics exam where I'll need those). Suffice to say, I'm pretty ******* sad right now.

I had decided to try out the Elive distro which is a lesser known Linux distro that uses Enlightenment as its window manager. Even though I specifically told it to install to the second harddisk (where I install all my Linuxes) it partitioned and used the first harddisk (where I keep all those things I just mentioned) without even notifying me. I thought having an internal harddisk as backup was good enough, but apparently not - the Elive installer seems to think it knows better than me what to partition.

I guess I need to ask some of my friends if I can borrow their reports, and the rest I'll just have to live without from now on.

Using SUSE 10.1 now - just decided to mount my documents partition, that's how I found out. SUSE 10.1 is kinda neat, but not exactly something I want to trade for that big part of my life (basically, everything I've ever done on a computer) that I just lost forever.

Don't ever install Elive. Don't even think about it.

helpme
May 23rd, 2006, 03:12 PM
Man, that sucks. :(

Sye d'Burns
May 23rd, 2006, 03:14 PM
Yipes!

aktiwers
May 23rd, 2006, 03:17 PM
Damn! That sucks!

Have you tried to recover it? Hold on I will look, when I was using Windows, this happend to me too (not THIS, but I lost all my stuff).

Before installing anything, I would try to recover the data. I dont know, if it works the same way with Linux partitions, but I will find the links for you.

EDIT:
I think this only works for windows.
But check some of these programs.
http://www.shellcity.net/cgi-bin/DB_Search/db_search.cgi?setup_file=createpage.setup.cgi&session_file=&session_file=&descript=recover&submit_search=SEARCH&exact_match=on

Your files should still be on the drive (accept where you just installed SuSe, Currect me if im wrong?). This was the case for me, on Windows.

Also check this:
http://riccardo.raneri.it/blog/eng/index.php/2006/03/02/free-tools-to-recover-lost-data/

bigken
May 23rd, 2006, 03:19 PM
all is not lost yet you could try a software package like ontrack data recovery
its quite cheap to buy this software can do a raw rewrite of the hdd and find every
file ever writen to the hdd Im sure if you do a google search on this you will find a free software package its worth a try as you cant cause anymore damage ;)

kanem
May 23rd, 2006, 03:23 PM
Holy Crap. Well, time heals all wounds. I once lost a lot of similar data (fried a hard drive while moving it somehow) several years ago. It was bad then but I hardly remember what I lost now. And while I do wish I still had the papers I wrote in undergrad, they were probably not as good as I remember.

YourSurrogateGod
May 23rd, 2006, 03:26 PM
*hugs his 2 external hard-drives*

I once lost _everything_ as you have, I then learned the value of having an external hard-drive.

mostwanted
May 23rd, 2006, 03:27 PM
Holy Crap. Well, time heals all wounds. I once lost a lot of similar data (fried a hard drive while moving it somehow) several years ago. It was bad then but I hardly remember what I lost now. And while I do wish I still had the papers I wrote in undergrad, they were probably not as good as I remember.

Well, if I didn't need any of it then it wouldn't be as big a tragedy, of course, then it would just be a damn shame.

When you study physics in a Danish gymnasium, the exam requires you to pretty much summarize one of your reports verbally. When you don't have this report, this gets a lot harder...

Sef
May 23rd, 2006, 03:30 PM
Here's some free data recovery software:

http://www.freebyte.com/filediskutils/

http://www.pcinspector.de/file_recovery/uk/download.htm

http://www.r-tt.com/

http://www.cgsecurity.org/wiki/TestDisk

This last one does work on Linux for sure.

Hope you can get at least some of it back, if not all.

fuscia
May 23rd, 2006, 03:33 PM
When you study physics in a Danish gymnasium, the exam requires you to pretty much summarize one of your reports verbally. When you don't have this report, this gets a lot harder...

i feel sick for you, dude. unless one of the other suggested solutions works, you have no choice but to see this as an oppurtunity to write a new, better and more badass report. good luck.

henriquemaia
May 23rd, 2006, 03:40 PM
This is bad. I know it is. I had a similar experience some years ago when I decided to install arklinux... I ate my second hard drive where I kept my files. My bad, because it was alpha and so, ultimately, it was my fault. I then became obsessed with backups.

ice60
May 23rd, 2006, 03:42 PM
there's this too, i haven't used it though
http://freshmeat.net/projects/delsafe/?branch_id=58363&release_id=203754
lots of your stuff should be recoverable, just don't use the drive

Mathias-K
May 23rd, 2006, 03:50 PM
That's sad in the extreme.

Don't do anything stupid to the disk. There must be some way to get the data back :)

Jucato
May 23rd, 2006, 03:56 PM
Crap... that's a *** thing to happen...
I wonder what happened. Last time I installed E16 through Elive, it worked fine.
I'm never using that CD again!!!!
*searches for Elive CD and puts it at the bottom of the stack*
Tis' eeeeevviilllllll!!!

picpak
May 23rd, 2006, 04:50 PM
This is why I put /home in a separate partition.

Jucato
May 23rd, 2006, 04:59 PM
This is why I put /home in a separate partition.

Of course that helps. I vigorously recommend (up to this day) to anyone I know who uses a computer, to put their data on a separate partition, whether they be using Linux or XP (I don't know anyone using OS X :D).

Unless of course the installer decides not to follow your instructions and install itself on a partition that you didn't direct it to... (which was what happened...)

bigken
May 23rd, 2006, 05:04 PM
might be an idea to unhook data only discs before trying this type of software in the future :-k

one thought on the data recovery its along and slow job but could be a very rewarding one and a lesson to us all backup your data

barbarian
May 23rd, 2006, 05:05 PM
My condolences. I know how u feel..:( I had my main desktop HD broken. I recovered almost all with dd_rescue utility , knoppix live cd and second HD.

I used this instructions:

http://translate.google.com/translate?hl=en&sl=de&u=http://www.linux-user.de/ausgabe/2004/08/048-dd-rescue/&prev=/search%3Fq%3Ddd_rescue%2Bloop%26hl%3Den%26hs%3DvVt %26lr%3Dlang_de%26safe%3Dactive%26client%3Dfirefox-a%26rls%3Dorg.mozilla:en-US:official%26sa%3DG%26as_qdr%3Dall

nalmeth
May 23rd, 2006, 05:24 PM
Man, that sucks.
It is treacherous ground sometimes when fooling around with distro's, the exitement maybe get's to ya ;)

I've had large data loss before, but nothing critical. I know, sort of, how you feel.

Good luck with your recovery process, hopefully this hasn't discouraged you too much.

BoyOfDestiny
May 23rd, 2006, 06:38 PM
Good luck on your report. It's all about redundant backups... A few things I've learned...

Hard drives fail eventually, only a matter of when, not if.

If using a crappy onboard raid, never hook the ide ribbons wrong (people still use ribbons now right? ;) )
it corrupted the raid, and I lost 80 gig or so.

And my more recent lesson, beware the rm command. It is evil (well maybe not evil, but be wary if doing anything recursive... ahhh!).

I've learned my lesson, I'll use it for one file at a time. Everything else get's mv ~/.Trash...

K.Mandla
May 23rd, 2006, 06:41 PM
Sad story, man. I can sympathize; it's happened to me too. Be sure to look into some of those data recovery programs. All is not lost until you killdisk it.

Zdravko
May 23rd, 2006, 09:12 PM
I feel sorry for you. But at least you learned a very important lesson in your life - stay close to what you are familiar with, run away from the unknown. In 100% of the cases, when I try to be explorer, I fail. Why? Because exploring is usually connected with experimenting which is just another way of risking your life.

GarethMB
May 23rd, 2006, 10:46 PM
I did the same when i installed Ubuntu (long story) and i can honestly say the data loss didn't both me AT ALL. It was a bitch having to learn ubuntu and not having windows to fall back on. But in the end it was for the best. It forced me onto linux, now i don't worry about virus's or spyware. Christ i don't even use a firewall, i rely on my router now.

aktiwers
May 31st, 2006, 01:23 AM
What happend? Did you ever get your data back?

mostwanted
May 31st, 2006, 06:57 AM
Nope. I've tried various programs (some of them posted here) to no success. I may seek out a professional, I may not. Anyhow, I consider the data mostly lost now as it was both repartitoned and overwritten, so what I would be able to get back would probably be bits and pieces.

bigken
May 31st, 2006, 02:20 PM
Nope. I've tried various programs (some of them posted here) to no success. I may seek out a professional, I may not. Anyhow, I consider the data mostly lost now as it was both repartitoned and overwritten, so what I would be able to get back would probably be bits and pieces.
I would spend the money and use ontrack data recovery software have you looked at there website. When the hdd has being formated writen over it can still retivie the previous os files and folders;)

Zodiac
May 31st, 2006, 02:27 PM
Damn... this makes me wish I had 600 bucks for some Network Attached Storage :(

parsh78
May 15th, 2010, 12:18 AM
Here is how to add an Trash icon on desktop
http://www.howtogeek.com/howto/ubuntu/add-the-trash-can-icon-to-your-ubuntu-desktop/

It was surprising to not find this information on ubuntuforums.

overdrank
May 15th, 2010, 12:27 AM
http://img147.imageshack.us/img147/5451/necromancing.jpg