I previously asked for help in this thread. Well, even though people tried to help me, unfortunately I still wasn't able to fix my problem. But now I know what caused my problem - it was this.

I have a 300GB hard drive. At first it only had Windows Vista on it. When I tried to install Ubuntu on it however, I used the 30% for windows and 70% for ubuntu, partitions setting. However, it failed but it still made the partition.

Seeing as how it was unsuccessful, I decided to try again. I used the same setting again, and now only there was only 7.5% space for Vista left, while the rest went to Ubuntu.

Then I tried a third time, BIG MISTAKE. Another 70% went to Ubuntu, leaving only a little more than 1% of the hard drive for Vista. VISTA ONLY HAD 1% OF THE TOTAL 300GB OF PARTITION SPACE. So when I tried to get Vista back, it wouldn't work, because if I was going to use Vista, I would only have 33mb of space, while linux takes over the rest of the 299.67mb of space.

Well.. the important files were on 2 computers. My dad brought the hard drive to work and asked some IT technicians in his IT department at work to fix it, and they said that it was too damaged to be fixed (that or there were no files on it). But luckily he was able to recover the files from the first computer (NOT from the computer that I tried to install ubuntu on). So the important files are saved.. but the 300gb hard drive for the other computer is basically dead.

So despite all the suggestions that you guys gave me in the thread mentioned before, I was unable to recover the files. Don't blame Ubuntu for destroying my computer.. it was all my fault for unsuccessfully installing it 3 times. I should have stopped at the first time, then things might not have turned out the way that they are now. But I do have the important files back; now I just have to figure out how to fix the partitions.

Ubuntu takes over 99% of the hard drive space (partitions I think?) and windows vista only has a 33mb partition size. I need to know how to fix this. What should I do? If I reinstall Ubuntu.. will I be able to find the files on there still? (meaning are the picture and video files able to move from a vista partition to a linux partition?) I might still have lost a few other files, but I did get most of them back (or all of them, but I'm not completely sure yet).

Also if I reinstall Vista, does that mean I have to spend hundreds of dollars on another license for it? Or can I just use my old one? (note: i have no cd to install vista on)

Is Vista fixable still? And what can I do to resize or fix the partitions? (in case you want to know, there's 4 partitions: 1 is excellent, 1 is good, 1 is bad, and 1 is very bad)

Thanks again,
-Ntvu

You do not seem to know what you are doing.

You Clickey-clickd this and clickey-clickd that, and accepting everything like this, blindly, is a windows mentality. You may (if you are determined) find out that this a bad thing to do.
You need to grow out of this if you are ever going to grow up.

Read. Learn. And eventually, understand.

Linux is not windows.

When you are asked a question by a linux install program, you are supposed to read it, think about it, and answer appropriately. Or Quit, until you have a better idea about what is going to happen. Then you can try again.

Do not just click [YES] (Because you cannot be bothered to read anything, and just "Want it to install") as you probably do with widows.

You have some homework to do:

With Microsoft, they decide how your computer works and behaves.
With linux you have to decide how your computer works, behaves and just what it installs.

Read up and make your choices.

Never just click "Yes", without considering the implications.

I wish you good luck with your linux installation, it is well worth the effort

Ok, thanks for the advice. By the way that time (about a week ago) was the first day that I was using Linux, and I hardly had any experience using the OS at all.

To be honest, I wasn't really paying attention to the text. I was just going to click my way out of it.. lol. But now I know that Linux isn't Windows and I have to be more careful about what happens.. so that the result isn't a situation like this.

When I was installing Linux, I guess I got so excited that I just didn't bother reading anything at all. That, and I didn't know what partitions were. But now I do.

I'm not sure that I entirely agree with tredegar's sentiments here.

Information is provided during the install process to help you make an informed choice, but accepting the defaults is usually fine — it's the rare cases when it isn't that you have to watch out for. And this applies to Windows as well as Linux.

Certainly, the disk partitioner should never trash files. That's a bug, and it would probably be a good idea to report it to the Ubuntu team (https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu) if you can provide any useful information on reproducing it.

There are some general, and perhaps more useful points of advice:

1) Always back up your files. Hard disks fail, even big commercial RAID-protected SAN storage solutions fail.

2) When installing, or just repartitioning your hard disk, back up your files again before you start, to make sure that your backups are up to date.

3) Test your backups and make sure they work.

4) If you are not sure what an option does, then try to find more information about it. This may mean posting on linuxquestions.org. If you are still unsure, either back out (if you can) or accept the default (which works in most cases)

As to re-installing Vista, you definitely do not need to buy a new licence. I would strongly discourage you from buying a new licence since you have already paid for a licence, and so by buying a now one to do the same job, you are simply allowing yourself to be exploited. You may have to contact your computer's vender to get them to send you an OEM install disk (and licence information if you don't have a copy of it, but this is usually supplied with the computer). Explain to them that you need it to re-install your (already licenced) operating system, and also ask them why you didn't receive one along with your computer.

If you do want to continue to install Linux, but are worried about breaking your system again by repartitioning, then I would download or have shipped the latest Ubuntu installer (https://shipit.ubuntu.com/) and use the Wubi installer program. Simply run the CD from within Windows and you can install from a file on your Windows box, without repartitioning your hard disk.

I'm still not sure whether the disk that I used was corrupted or not. If the disk can still load Linux and run it, is there still a possibility that it could be corrupted? Because when I tried out Linux I didn't test out every single feature of it. I only tested a few things.

But anyway the partitioner made it so that the Windows Vista partition only gets 33mb of the 300gb, while Linux gets the rest. And the important files, which are hundreds of photos and videos, are definitely over 33mb.

So I don't think that those files are in the Windows Vista partition since it's only 33mb, so would it be correct to say that those files were deleted? And if not, then is it possible that they could be somewhere in the Linux partition?

The disk itself won't be corrupted, but your Windows partition might be.

The partitioner should not move files between partitions; some of the binary data might still exist in the free space on the Linux partition but (because of the way most Linux filesystems spread data out over the partition) it would be unlikely that any useful number of entire files have survived. If you can afford it, a professional data recovery system might be an option.

My point was that the installer should not have let the partition get into that state; it should have errored if it had to delete anything other than free space, and that error should have caused the install to abort with an error message. That didn't happen, and that's a bug.

—Robert J Lee

"Certainly, the disk partitioner should never trash files. That's a bug, and it would probably be a good idea to report it to the Ubuntu team ..."

The disk partitioner is clueless; I'd say the bug is the Ubuntu installer by default hogging 70% of some other partition - why would it do that?

I don't know what state the partition tools are in, but resizing an NTFS partition (any version) is not anywhere near as simple as resizing a FAT partition. A lot of important book-keeping information was probably trashed by the resizing tool. Maybe the "magicrecover" tool can find something on the (ex)NTFS partition.