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View Full Version : [ubuntu] 14.04.1 installer wiped out my home partition disobeying my consent



funzith
October 12th, 2014, 08:14 AM
Yesterday I was doing a test installation of Ubuntu 14.04.1 on my 1015px netbook.

Prior to this I was having a dual boot of 12.04 LTS + MInt 12. Now I wanted to replace the mint OS by U14.04.1 LTS.

I had a separate /home partition which was commonly used by both Ubuntu12.04 and Mint (ofc with different usernames). I just wanted to continue it that way, and have the home folder of the new 14.04.1 on the same /home partition, with all my previous files on that partition intact.

So, while installing the 14.04.out1, I had chosen to format only the root partition of the earlier mint. I had selected the home partition only to be mounted as '/home' but not to be formatted -- had left unchecked the corresponding option to format .

The installer was doing things very slowly, and finally when it finished the installation, I boot to the 14.04 only to find out that it had wiped of all earlier files (the home folders corresponding to users on the 12.04 and mint). I see only the home folder of the newly installed 14.04 and all others gone.

I have lost very very important precious data (many codes, original works, communications...) and I am stuck here now.

QUESTIONS :a

1) Why did it happen? The installer is buggy? or did I do something wrong?

0) most importantly, HOW DO I RECOVER THE LOST FILES?

sudodus
October 12th, 2014, 09:40 AM
Welcome to the Ubuntu Forums :-)

I am very sorry that your home partition with your precious data (many codes, original works, communications... was wiped :-(

I don't know if it is a bug or if you did something wrong. There is a bug that can wipe other installed distros, when you try to install 'alongside'. See this link

https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/ubiquity/+bug/1265192

But I don't know if it affected you. Did you select 'Something else' at the partitioning window to do it manually? Then it should have worked without wiping your data.

-o-

But installing a new operating system as well as all operations where you edit the partition table or file systems are risky. It is very important to backup the previous system or at least all valuable data before.

-o-

I'm afraid that a lot of your data is lost - overwritten. Some data might still 'sit there on the drive surface', but without the file system recognizing them. Please do not mount the partition (your home partition)!!! Instead you can boot from your Ubuntu install DVD/USB drive and try to rescue what can be rescued.

If the data is very valuable, I suggest that you get another drive (HDD) and clone your whole drive or at least your home partition to that drive. And then do the recovery attempts on that drive. You can use ddrescue to create the cloned copy. The info page
info ddrescue is well written and very useful.

You can try testdisk and try to see the system before formatting, but do not hope too much ...

You can try photorec, and that way identify the data still 'sitting there on the drive surface'. This tool recognizes typical data in the beginning of files and can recover quite a lot, if it is not overwritten by other data.

See this link

http://www.cgsecurity.org/

and search also for other tips and tutorials via the internet.