Hi all,

I'm pretty sure I've done something horribly wrong, and I'm hoping that one of you can help me fix it.
Over the weekend, I decided to update my x86_64 system from suse 10.2 to suse 10.3. The update failed, and I ended up with a brick. So I tried to reinstall Suse 10.2. That worked...to a degree (I got console access at least.)

So, knowing that I'd probably have to do a clean install to get things working again, I copied my home directory to what I thought was my secondary hard drive, which I use for my music collection. I had the secondary hdd mounted at /music

I did a fresh install, and everything's working. Except when I mounted the secondary hdd, I found it to be blank.

I'm thinking that perhaps I mounted it incorrectly, and rather than storing all my music on this secondary drive, it was still sitting on the primary?

So here are my 2 questions:
1. is there any way to try to recover any of the data from my original (and now formatted) home directory?

2. how should I go about properly mounting this secondary drive. I was using the partitioner bit out of Yast.

Thanks for all your help!

... um... it is technically possible with serious forensics.

... "partitioner bit out of YaST"? You mean where it assigns mountpoints during installation? You probably accidentally told it to format the partition too. Read carefully.

/music is not a folder in the standard directory tree. It exists only if created by the user (including the root user).

On re-installing 10.2, if /music exists, then you created it during the re-instllation. If it shows up in /etc/fstab, then you created it during re-installation. You may have overlooked the format and filesystem type options in the screen in which you designated /music as a mount point. It may be possible to recover with *serious forensics* as Simon Bridge says.

On the other hand, if /music did not exist after re-instlaling 10.2, and you had to manually create the folder again to serve as mount point for the second drive, it's probably safe and sound. It becomes a matter of properly mounting the partition to see what's there.

You don't say what tools you have used to view that partition on the second drive, nor do you say what commands (if working at the command line) you have used to try to mount the partition, so it isn't possible to tell if you have/have not properly mounted the partition on the second drive.

The important thing to do immediately is to prevent disk writes to that second drive. Remove it (or comment out) the entry in /etc/fstab.

As root, umount /music (in case it is mounted).

That will preserve it in it's present state. Data recovery depends on keeping it that way until you have the tools to attempt data recovery.

Then point your browser at www.google.com/linux, search for: "data recovery" format. Start searching for ways and means to recover the second disk.

But first, let's prove there is need. Re-read paragraphs 2, 3, and 4 above, and provide more info.

I did have to remap the secondary drive after the fresh install. And I did this using the partitioner in Yast. I set the mount point again at /music and did not reformat that drive. I'm still not seeing anything when I navigate to it though.
it's device name is /dev/sda1

I only know a few basic console commands, so I'm not sure how to do any mounting that way without a tutorial in front of me.

How can I go about checking that drive for data?

To see what partitions exist try "/sbin/fdisk -l" (lower case ell).

I'm getting confused. If /music is /dev/sda1, then what is the /dev/xxxx for the partition in which you installed 10.2 (xxxx is for hdax or sdax or whatever)?

my /music drive is a pata drive, so it got the sda moniker...the primary partition is a sata drive and it's sdb

There is also another (unfortunately worse) possibility: that you are mounting the partition correctly NOW, but you DID NOT MOUNT IT BEFORE the reinstallation. That is: you saved your files in a /music folder in the (let's say) "old system's" partition and the "music" partition was never mounted/used. Is that possible?

enemorales, I'm very worried that this is exactly the case. That's why I was also asking how to mount a drive, because my primary partition was more than large enough to hold all the data that should have been in the /music drive.

If I unmount the /dev/sda1, I shouldn't see any data in /music, right?

If you unmount /dev/sda1, then you will get a regular folder /music, where you can put whatever you want (as long as you have the permissions). When you mount /dev/sda1 on /music then contents of the folder cannot be accessed, but remain there. (At least it was like that some years ago, when I was learning this mount/unmount thing.)

If you saved your files in /music and /dev/sda1 was not mounted on that folder, and since you formatted the system partition, then I'm afraid that you have lost your files. There are some tools to try to retrieve them, but you probably know what that means...

Ok, so It sounds like I'm going to have to try to recover lost data. I've done this on windows, but never on linux. Can anyone recommend a good program to use? If indeed the /music drive is really blank, I can use that to install a new system thus leaving the primary partition free and unmounted so that I can do recovery stuff.

Is there an easier way? Maybe load the software and OS onto a flash drive?
Are there any live disks that I could download to allow access to that drive?
Or should I try to install windows on the /dev/sda1 and run recovery tools?

If the lost data was on a ext3 partition, then you are stuck with grep. ext2, fat32, have a range of recovery suites for the googling.

I'm pretty sure it was either reiserfs or ext2.

With reiserfs, you are in worse condition that ext3. But ext2 has recovery tools.
http://recover.sourceforge.net/linux/recover/

Hi all,

Thanks for your help. I ended up being able to recover almost everything. I downloaded a couple of live cds RIPLinux and the Ultimate Backup CD and used them to restore the deleted reiserfs partition, and then I found a tutorial here on linuxquestions detailing how to rebuild a destroyed reiser partition. All in all it was pretty painless once I sat down to do it, and the important things were saved.