12.04 installation wiped the data

[ddavidd]

I have used Ubuntu for some time and have been convinced as is often recommended that it is better to replace an installation completely instead of upgrading.
I just replaced the installation of version 10 on my daughter's laptop with 12.04 LTS. This should be simple as all the data was on a 30GB FAT32 partition, there is also a 147 GB NTFS partition. I have found that a common FAT32 partition works well from Ubuntu and Windows and cuts out problems with file permissions. Having successfully done this some times before and not being able to see how it could go wrong, I didn't back up the data, and anyway, it was almost full, 5 CDs.
The installation seemed very simple, it recognised the Windows 7 and Ubuntu installations and offered an option to replace the Ubuntu installation, making it clear that it would be wiped. I chose this option.
Unfortunately, it also seems to have wiped the FAT32 partition.
After editing fstab, the two data partitions are mounted and available but the FAT32 partition is empty. The disk utility als shows no data on the partition. All my daughter's data is gone. Can anyone explain how this can happen? I need to be able to reinstall Ubuntu with absolute safety

[darkod]

You may still be able to recover something with testdisk possibly. But STOP writing to that partition, or even to boot ubuntu. Do it from live mode.
http://www.cgsecurity.org/wiki/TestDisk_Step_By_Step

I don't know how the replace option works. If the partitions were mounted permanently, it might consider them part of ubuntu and wiped them because it says it will wipe all data. But this is just my speculation.

In any case, for best control you are much better off using the manual option (Something Else) instead of any auto option to install. Using the manual option is pretty straightforward, you only need to specify which partition(s) you want to use and at which mount point. Works without glitch.

[ddavidd]

Thanks very much for the tip!!

I have tried unsuccessfully with PC Inspector File Recivery and am now trying with Testdisc.
It seems to have found files!

[darkod]

If it can list them with 'P', there is good chance it can "return" that partition. Just be careful to do things right. :)

[ddavidd]

Thank-you very much indeed for the excellent suggestions!

TestDisk successfully recovered most of the files.
The pictures all open all right, but unfortunately some of the ODT files, which were extremely important to my daughter e.g. a story she has worked on for a long time, were corrupted. I have now spent another day trying to recover the ODT files by various means but have now given up. The affected files have the original number of pages but only a few lines of strange characters appear at the top of each page. Can anyone suggest a way of recovering these?

I reinstalled my computer, after first backing up absolutely everything, by choosing the last installation option to select the partition as in previous versions and it worked fine.

The conclusion seems to be thet there is a bug, perhaps better described in this case as a monster, in the 12.04 installation routine. I will try to report it.

[wilee-nilee]

It is a bummer when this happens you have my empathy.

The best way to avoid any problems like this is to do a custom install, it is now called something other on the same choice of how you want to install on the install gui.

This is fairly straight forward, I always go this method, I usually have anywhere from 2 to 7 OS on my one HD so I'm just careful.

Glad you were able to recover some of the stuff. :)

[ddavidd]

Extremely serious defect

I have now been trying to report this bug for some time.
I have read through an extremely long web page of what I should do before reporting a bug without any clear instructions about how to do it
I have created an account at Launchpad, which constantly demands me to log on although I am shown as logged on
I have tried to wade through the Unity desktop to open the application Apport without any luck.

Summary: There is an extremely serious bug in the 12.04 LTS installation routine (see description above), which wiped valuable data on a partition that was very carefully NOT selected for installation.
I have now given up trying to report the bug as the process is too complicated and I have aready wasted two days trying to recover the files and trying to repair corrupted ODT files.

Thank-you

[ddavidd]

And then the network connection dissappeared again.

Fortunately, I already know that you have to reactivate the network in the Notwork Manager, version 11 did it.
Perhaps that was another bug someone would have reported if they could.

[darkod]

If you configure the network once it's very rare not to work after a reboot. Depending what is the problem, maybe you need to blacklist a module, or make a module load at boot.

As for the data being wiped, as I said before, I suspect that if you had permanent mounts it might have caused it. Don't forget, linux works with mount points, not with partitions.

That's why you can have the linux OS split on different partitions, even different HDDs, without any problem. It considers them all part of the system. So when you agree to wipe everything, I would not be surprised if it includes these mount points too.