The /dev/sdb1 is the device itself as discovered and assigned by the operating system. It's a 'special file'. On the other hand /media/CORSAIR/ is just a directory nothing more. But using the mount command (Ubuntu did this for you) the device /dev/sdb1 got connected to the directory (in this case also called mountpoint) so that the contents of the device are available to system and users.

Kind regards,

Eric

oh, so -R is really important, because otherwise the contents of a directory aren't copied ?
If so, maybe that's why I didn't get all these errors when I copied the directory the first time around.
It may sound crazy to you, because I'm the one using the computer, but I think you're better suited than I am to know if I've got all the files I need on my computer.
I mean, it's quite difficult for me to list everything I made in the last months. I'm not 100% sure whether I've only used the $home directory. Where do you feel like there might be files/preferences/softwares/.../ I didn't save yet?

Are you fscking your partition?

Type into the Terminal, "sudo fsck.ext4 -p /dev/sda5" (without the quotes)

leopard, is it normal that you deleted the f option as well ?
anyway, I wrote it and the output was :
/dev/sda5 is mounted.
WARNING !! Running e2fsck on a mounted filesystem may cause SEVERE filesystem damage.
Do you really want to conitnue (y,n) ?

Verify you have backed up your data, and proceed by pressing y.
Make sure you unmount it first.

Let's sum up the situtation, because leopard seems lost.
I'm about to try what you, leopard, asked as a last resort before reinstalling the whole system.
Yet I think I already made that procedure (e2fsck), which didn't work, so at the same time I'm being helped by Eric who is helping me to save everything I have so that I can safely reinstall the whole system, which seems unstable anyway.

You seem lost. Unmount the FS and run the automatic repair. Not hard.

I pressed Y, the repair is being done.

Let it finish and pray to God it goes well.

leopard you've got to understand this situation has been unsolved for weeks, and I already did that, so I have little hope honestly. But let's try it nonetheless one last time before reinstalling everything, it can't get worse than it is right now.

Eric, post 77 is adressed to you.

Well the function has exited. The output was :
/dev/sda5 was not cleanly unmounted, check forced.
/dev/sda5: 3451584/5146542 files (2% non contiguous), 2584624/5120000 blocks.

What should I do now ?

thats the problem. Try restarting, if the command has completely finished

Yes, the -R (or -r or --recursive) are important if you want to copy subdirectories and their contents also. Have a look at the man page of cp:
. You'll see there are a lot more options you could use.

Your personal files are normally saved in the /home/<yourusername> directory. That is, your FILES, not the programs you installed. User preferences and such also get saved in the same directory but in 'hidden' subdirectories, like .gnome2 and others (the leading . indicates it's a hidden directory).

Programs normally get installed below the /usr directory, with program preferences and configurations in the /etc directory. Where depends on the installation script that came with the package you installed. Some install in /usr/local, others in /usr/bin, /usr/sbin, and so on.

It's pretty hard to get everything back up and running the same way if you have no reference point whatsoever, meaning, if you don't remember what you have installed then it's hard to find the config files for it.

When you get your system up and running again I'll give you some pointers what to save/backup in order to almost automatically restore your system.

Kind regards,

Eric

77 answered in 88

Kind regards,

Eric

What do you mean by restarting ?
Just hitting the reboot option, or shutting the computer down, getting the cd off, and booting as linux ?