[Bug 579866] Re: 10.04 and 10.10 Install formatted ext3 partition (data lost)

[John McCabe-Dansted]

BTW, you can recover some files from a formatted partition. See e.g.
PhotoRec. There are also more powerful proprietary tools that can
recover pretty much everything including directory structure. That said
WHY?

I just did this on 12.04. I chose ext4 in the Edit partition dialog box.
I noted that the format box was unchecked. I ticked OK. The format box
was in the "Install" dialog was STILL unchecked. I hit "Install Now".
The precise moment I pressed "Install Now" it added a tick in the
"Format?". I quickly tried to stop the install, but by the time I had it
had already been formatted.

As I understand Ubiquity has a two second delay before it adds the tick
to the "Format?" column; this allows the user to check twice (i.e in
both dialogs) that the format box hasn't been checked, and still have
their partition formatted under them.

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https://bugs.launchpad.net/bugs/579866

Title:
  10.04 and 10.10 Install formatted ext3 partition (data lost)

Status in “ubiquity” package in Ubuntu:
  Triaged

Bug description:
  Binary package hint: ubiquity

  I have installed 10.04 yesterday. My system already had running 9.10
  with following partitions.

   /          (ext4)
   /home (ext3)

  While installing I chose to format / and not to format /home but
  chosen wrong partition type for /home i.e. ext4. Install was smooth
  but I realized that installer actually had formatted (or converted ?)
  my ext3 /home to ext4 /home wiping out all the data. I think even if I
  have specified ext4 by mistake, why should installer format my
  partition when I have specifically not asked for it. At the most it
  should try to mount it as ext4 and the bell out.

  I don't know what would you do in order to fix this but it would be
  great help if there is a way to undo this. This has hit more people I
  guess, see http://ubuntuforums.org/showpost.php?p=8195037&postcount=1
  . Also I am following good
  https://help.ubuntu.com/community/DataRecovery .

  Thanks for all the good work guys but this particularly is very scary.

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