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Pghg022
October 16th, 2018, 04:22 PM
So i have an old, 80gb hard drive thats filled 100% (!) with a debian session installed. I have some data Home data on it that i would like to keep on the drive and i dont have an option to back it up anywhere else

Is there a way to install a fresh version of ubuntu on it without deleting the home directory with all the files and user data on it?

oldfred
October 16th, 2018, 04:52 PM
Is your data in a separate data partition or separate /home partition?
Post this:
lsblk -f

If drive is 100%, it really is time for a new larger drive. You generally need some working room. Ubuntu hides 5%, but you should not let any system get to 100% full.
New install will houseclean a lot but may be larger.
post this also:
df -h

Pghg022
October 16th, 2018, 05:10 PM
do i need to be logged in to do this? im currently on a liveboot
when ever i try to boot up the system it just crashes and i cant do anything about it

Pghg022
October 16th, 2018, 05:15 PM
NAME FSTYPE LABEL UUID MOUNTPOINT
loop0 squashf /rofs
sda
├─sda1 ext4 b1ff15b8-18e8-4f80-a5ac-60992eddc731 /media/xubuntu/b1ff15b
├─sda2
└─sda5 swap cf09b7b4-855e-4df8-9e22-d863e725cc40 [SWAP]
sdb
└─sdb1 vfat 16C1-4DD2 /cdrom
sr0

xubuntu@xubuntu:~/.irssi[$ df -h
Filesystem Size Used Avail Use% Mounted on
udev 1.9G 0 1.9G 0% /dev
tmpfs 387M 1.5M 385M 1% /run
/dev/sdb1 3.8G 1.4G 2.4G 37% /cdrom
/dev/loop0 1.3G 1.3G 0 100% /rofs
/cow 1.9G 780M 1.2G 41% /
tmpfs 1.9G 62M 1.9G 4% /dev/shm
tmpfs 5.0M 4.0K 5.0M 1% /run/lock
tmpfs 1.9G 0 1.9G 0% /sys/fs/cgroup
tmpfs 1.9G 524K 1.9G 1% /tmp
tmpfs 387M 84K 387M 1% /run/user/999
/dev/sda1 71G 70G 0 100% /media/xubuntu/b1ff15b8-18e8-4f80-a5ac-60992eddc731

deadflowr
October 16th, 2018, 05:20 PM
It was meant that you post the output from the installed version, and not the live session.

oldfred
October 16th, 2018, 06:18 PM
You are showing only one partition and it is at 100%.
And you have a separate swap partition.

While you say you do not have an option to backup, a 64GB flash drive is not expensive. And your data would probably fit into it, as system is using multiple GB itself.
If your data is at all valuable you need to have a backup.

Any install option that might keep your data in /home has a risk of overwriting it. Just a difference in a check box on formatting will either erase all data or overwrite just system data.
Over install without formatting to reuse same home data. "Dirty Install"
System settings or anything in / may be overwritten with defaults. Good backups still important
https://help.ubuntu.com/community/UbuntuReinstallation
http://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?t=1941872