Topic: Data Recovery

[p-jones]

My V7Pre4 system died. I could still login as root and see all the contents of the home folders. I have installed a new hard drive and rebuilt the system. Is there some way I can now connect the old drive and transfer the contents of the home directory to the new hard drive.

I get a bit lost with some of the low level linux stuff so it nees to be fairly basic.

Thanks
Peter

[p-jones]

I should have stated that both drives are SATA

[CharlieBrady]

My V7Pre4 system died.

In what way did it die? Why did it die? If there is any chance that there was a bug, or missing documentation which contributed to your doing the wrong thing, then you should open a bug in the bug tracker.

Is there some way I can now connect the old drive and transfer the contents of the home directory to the new hard drive.

There is a way to do a full restore from an old hard drive. That will restore all configuration and user files from the old drive to the new.

A brief description of the process can be found here:

http://bugs.contribs.org/show_bug.cgi?id=615

Note that you will need to have e-smith-backup-1.13.4-09 installed for this to work, but I think that is in pre4. Note also that the description of the process is not quite complete. You will also need to do:

config setprop backup Program CopyFromDisk status enabled

before attempting the restore.

If you just want to restore a single user's home directory, that can be done more simply and safely with a recursive copy.

[p-jones]

Thanks for the reply Charlie
Since I can see the data I want back, I too thought a copy of some sort would work but I am not too smart a low level linux stuff. When I install the "old" HDD on the second SATA controller, it starts to get in the way of the good system. I suspect I need to rename partitions or something - not really sure.

Thanks for the links, I will follow up on those and see where they take me. I am looking at LTools but I am not sure they will handle an ext3 partition.

At the moment, I dont want to do anything to compromise the data I want to recover.

[CharlieBrady]

When I install the "old" HDD on the second SATA controller, it starts to get in the way of the good system. I suspect I need to rename partitions or something - not really sure.

What does "starts to get in the way" mean?

Please answer via the bug tracker. Open a new bug, describing what you are trying to do and what is not working. Even if it turns out to be not a bug in the software, the issues you raise might be usefully turned into better documentation.

[p-jones]

What I mean is that at some point (which I dont know) it starts to load its initialisation files from the old disk not the new disk and ends up booting up the same as the stuffed system.

I will create a bug tonight when I can try go through the old disk and get a bit more "meat" to support a bug report.

[CharlieBrady]

What I mean is that at some point (which I dont know) it starts to load its initialisation files from the old disk not the new disk and ends up booting up the same as the stuffed system.

That sounds like this:

http://bugs.contribs.org/show_bug.cgi?id=961

I will create a bug tonight when I can try go through the old disk and get a bit more "meat" to support a bug report.

OK.

[mdo]

A safe way not to "starts to get in the way" might be to put the old HDD into an external USB enclosure (there are now enclosures that can handle Sata HDDs!).
That way you have control to mount it only when you want to use it (as input for copying). SME7 (kernel 2.6) seems to be very handy with using USB.
Michael

[p-jones]

Thanks for that Michael.

Was starting to look like a viable reality but hey, the show's not over till the fat lady sings..I did a bit of command line witch-craft and was able to get the networking & samba started and pull over the files I was desperate to recover.

I think the rest of it is pretty stuffed but what the heck..only takes a few minutes to rebuild. Guess it's a timely reminder re backups end all that good stuff..

Cheers
Peter