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

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