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Thank you very much. Yes, one hard drive has the documents, etc., and one has Ubuntu. The documents drive (an HDD) is mounted to /home, whereas the other drive, mounted to /, is an SSD. I cannot remember which way around that that they are, but neither drive should be unallocated - both should have ext4 filesystems, one with the operating system, the other with documents.
If /dev/sda is the documents hard drive that has gone wrong somehow, and it is set to be mounted to /home, would that possibly cause the system to fail to boot in the way described? Do you have any idea how a previously functioning hard drive might suddenly start to show as unallocated in the circumstances described?
In any event, I shall instruct my father how to run the test and see whether anything turns up.
Do you have any idea how a previously functioning hard drive might suddenly start to show as unallocated in the circumstances described?
Quote:
had a power cut last night,
Not being familiar with a add-on Promise controller, in non-RAID mode. All I can guess is somehow the power cut scrambled that controller which may have scrambled the hard drive also. If sda held all the documents and was symlinked to /home on sdb. Your dad or you have your work cut out for you trying to retrieve said documents from a unallocated drive. The parted magic cd comes with test disk tools for situations like this. Google will be your friend on how to recover data using testdisk on sda if I read you right.
I run a APC
Backup on my motorcycle shop and home Desktop PCs to avoid the kind of situation you and your Dad are finding your selves in right now.
Happily, there is a backup to a remote hard drive, which was put in place using Deja Dup. The system needs to be working, however, before the restore can take place, and that will be a somewhat fiddly process. I wonder whether that will be easier or more difficult than the recovery tool that you mentioned?
Thank you, incidentally, very much for your help with this.
Thank you. I think that I shall have to pay my parents a visit to fix their system in person. This is most annoying, since I had only just finished setting up their computers when the power cut struck!
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