Recover from system down status

[chris]

On Mon, 2011-05-02 at 21:31 +0100, Liam Proven wrote:
> On 2 May 2011 21:00, chris <chevhq at gmail.com> wrote:
> > On Mon, 2011-05-02 at 12:01 +0100, Liam Proven wrote:
> >> On 1 May 2011 21:29, PIYUSH SINGH <meetpiyush2006 at gmail.com> wrote:
> >> >
> >> >
> > <snip>
> >>
> >> If you didn't... You tried an operating system upgrade on a
> >> single-volume machine with vitally important files on it with no
> >> backup? Are you completely mad?
> >>
> >> Using a live CD, I'd try to recover what you can, then unmount the
> >> volume, use fsck to repair it, then you /might/ be able to remount it
> >> R/W and change the permissions. I would not hold out a huge amount of
> >> hope, though.
> >>
> > having had a similar issue in the past with power failures, combined
> > with my ups blowing up I did the following.
> > download a copy of partition magic.  burnt the iso using a friends
> > computer and recovered the important stuff to a usb key.
> > Sorry I don't have an url for Partition Magic, but a quick google should
> > find it.
> 
> Um, for what it's worth, PartitionMagic was a good solution a few
> years ago but is less so now.
> 
> [1] It's proprietary paid-for software & so downloads etc. are
> illegal. (Older versions were given away on cover disks &c, but
> still...
> 
> [2] It's not been updated since PartitionMagic 8 in 2004, so it does
> not support recent Linux filesystems such as ext4.
> 
> [3] It's purely a partition-management tool. It might help to recover
> a partition which was damaged, e.g. by a power failure in the middle
> of being moved or something, but it will not let you mount a partition
> or access its contents.
> 
> I was a big fan of PartitionMagic since I reviewed it in about 1995 -
> here's a later review of mine from 1998:
> http://www.pcpro.co.uk/reviews/utilities/2230/partitionmagic-4
> 
> (Australasian readers might have seen that in PC @uthority. :¬) )
> 
> But it's long-dead now, alas, since Symantec bought it and killed it.
> 
> PartEd is the modern FOSS equivalent, which is on the Ubuntu LiveCD -
> which is why I recommended that. An Ubuntu LiveCD will not only let
> you edit partitions, like PartitionMagic, but also fsck them, mount
> them, inspect and recover their contents.
> 
> -- 
> Liam Proven • Info & profile: http://www.google.com/profiles/lproven
> Email: lproven at cix.co.uk • GMail/GoogleTalk/Orkut: lproven at gmail.com
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> 

Thanks Liam, this seems to be my learning day.  :-)

-- 
Cheers the kiwi