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Hello,

Now this isn't something you should rely on, but I wanted to tell you something that just worked for me.

A faulty power supply caused my Linux installation (Mandrake 2006 by the way) to get corrupted. The error message was that the "superblock" was corrupted. Correct me if I'm wrong but I think this is the equivalent of the dos fat table?

Anyhoo, it wouldn't fully boot and the repair option didn't work. Inserting the DVD and doing a rescue also didn't get any results.

So I resigned myself to have to reinstall. A bit cheezed off because I don't backup as often as I should - this is a hobby box after all.

To my amazement the whole thing - all my data files were still there when I reinstalled.

I generally use the default options when installing but this still the closest thing to a miracle I have witnessed.

So if all else fails don't loose hope. Regular backups still by far the best option though! ;-)

Cheers

ps why can linux install in 7 minutes when another "popular" operatins system takes over an hour? ;-) .... - rhetorical..

Assuming that you created /home in its own partition (which you should) and then during a reinstall you do not reformat it (meaning the /home partition), your files will remain intact.

Along those lines, you can actually switch to an entirely different distro if you wanted to -- just use this same approach to install the new distro "around" your /home. (The key of course is to not reformat /home.)