partition data recovery
 

Hello everyone,

I have been using gnu linux mandrake 9.2 with gnome 2.4 as my chosen desktop. The hard disk was formatted as: / 1.7gb (54% total disk); /home 267mb; swap 98mb; windows 98 1.5gb (I guess).

I decided to re-install mandrake 9.2 onto the same, previous / partition. There is a /home directory within the / partition (as I expect) but I cannot seem to see the original /home (267mb) partition. I used the gnome control centre to see the partitions. If I try to mount the partition formerly known as my /home (267mb) I receive the dialog window that data will be lost if I proceed (I do not proceed).

I thought that when I install newer versions of linux, my /home (267mb) partition would be left unchanged. How do I access my /home (267mb) partition when I run the re-installed linux, using gnome (or icewm)?

Thanks.

You probably need to use testdisk, or gpart to access the overwritten partition.....

Thanks for your advice, I shall try and download gpart. Firstly I have to learn how to connect to the internet again. I am trying to re-install the adsl program rp-ppoe for my modem, but I digress.

Can you explain, even though I installed into the / drive and did not re-format any other drives during the re-installation, I am not left a hard disk drive that consists of /, windows and un-formatted regions that represent /home and /swap in my previous installation?

Thanks,

I would suggest that the warning to lost data is to do with the new /home you have created.

Try mounting the old home partition under a different mount point to check all is present and correct.
If you have some spare disk space I would also back it up before proceeding, and also the new one, just in case.

Thank you for your advice so far.

I tried to download gpart but could not install it (I never did understand how to compile a program using make!)

I downloaded testdisk and to my pleasant suprised, the program worked and even more surprising, the old data in the /home (267mb) directory is there! I managed to see the files using testdisk. A useful program if I may say so.

The next question to ask is, how do I now transfer this data to my new /home directory and save to storage media? How do I re-mount the /home (267mb) partition so that I will see this when I reboot my pc?

Thanks.

For the benefit of novices, I managed to mount the /home partition after reading the mount manual (i.e. type: "man mount" in a command terminal) and editing the fstab file using the mc program (my favourite file manager!).

As someone above kindly stated, the data on the /home directory created by the re-installation will be overwritten by the original /home (267mb) directory, but I had no data in it so this did not matter.

Now I can see my original /home directory. In theory now, I can continue to re-install the operating system without my personal data being affected.

I have no thank testdisk and the developer who was most helpful in advising me how the program works. Gpart on the other hand did not even install, so my recommendation to others is to definitely use testdisk: it works and the developer is very helpful.