Re: Will reinstalling wipe out all my data?

From: Boris Glawe (boris_at_boris-glawe.de)
Date: 09/29/03 

Date: Mon, 29 Sep 2003 11:44:27 +0200

Lothian wrote:
> I've completely messed things up now. I can't boot into Linux, Win98
> or even get a bootable WinXP install cd to start. If I reinstall
> Redhat 9, does it completely wipe out my saved media files too? I
> have spent hours locating and downloading music and videos from my
> favorite band...will those all be gone if I reinstall from the CD?
>
> I don't mind having to download and reinstall the programs, like
> Mozilla, Evolution, mplayer, etc. I just can't bear the thought of
> losing all that data.
>
> I've tried reinstalling grub, but it doesn't take. I think I've messed
> up the MBR and tried to add grub to each of my 3 installed Hard
> Drives...now I'm just plain confused. This all started when I thought
> I might want to play with XP by installing it on the free partition on
> the 3rd HD. Redhat is installed on the 2nd partition of that 3rd HD.
> Win98 is on the 1st HD and the 2nd is just for storage.

Buy a computer magazine with an included knoppix CD. Boot from CDROM and access
you data by mounting the harddrive(s) at an arbirtary mountpoint. Burn your data
  CD or find friend who copies the files on it's laptop. Get another harddisk,
plug it in and mv the data to this harddisk. There are many solutions. The only
problem is how to get up a system at all. Maybe you can also simply enter the
redhat 9 disk and start it with "linux rescue", which will boot a live system
from where you can mount/access any data on your machine.

greets Boris

Relevant Pages

  • Re: The Microsoft stranglehold on its users....
    ... loadlin to boot up linux manually by hand from DOS. ... LILO had bugs and it was a trap because to uninstall LILO you had to get a successful boot into Linux and uninstall it from the utility. ... The latest Red Hat Workstation Linux just loads everything on your box with little or no choices and then around version 7 they started to include CDROM drivers for the new, not the old CDROM drives. ... And, I tried the trick of using the old Linux install to mount the new OS software CDROM disk, copy the whole disk to a different partition, then run the install and that would not work either. ...
    (sci.research.careers)
  • Re: Anyone tried basiclinux?
    ... Don't want to see the dos prompt anymore. ... You are not prepared to use linux yet. ... and wiped out the entire install. ... Boot floppies are a legacy thing nowadays, ...
    (alt.linux)
  • Re: Grub Read Error on 1st boot after install
    ... > I'm new to Linux. ... > won't boot now. ... > install Linux on. ... use a second hard disk rather than just different partitions on ...
    (linux.redhat.install)
  • Re: Cant boot from DVD
    ... Say you download a Linux CD you can boot pretty much any PC in the ... Microsoft Windows used to be that way too, a Windows install ... As for Linux, look up how the netbook respin of Ubuntu came about. ...
    (comp.sys.mac.system)
  • Re: Can someone else help? Was changing partition size.
    ... I tried the supposed fix to make Windows 98SE boot up with more ... than a gig of memory but that has not worked either. ... The last time I did that set of changes, it was done by using a Linux LiveCD ... and finish the Win98 install. ...
    (microsoft.public.windowsxp.general)