Linux for your taste (sorry Naw :D) (40 Viewers)

[Rami]

Oh god... I mistakenly formatted my 200 GB drive, with all the multimedia and Juventus matches, videos, material!! Accumlated material of 3 years!!!

I thought it was the thumb drive and formatted using qtparted. Whats even worse I wrote on it, again thinking its the pen drive!!

Help guys!! How the hell could I retrieve my precious Media!!!

Ok, thankfully, I have recovered 50% of that hard drive using a rescue utility. The other 50% was, also luckily, TV series (Lost, Prison Break, 4400...etc) which I wouldn't really cry over. The important thing is that all my Juve material and Music was saved.

I borrowed a 500 gig drive from a friend so I could rescue the data (since I can't write on the formatted drive)...and before re-transferring to my 200 gig drive I decided to change the FAT32 filesystem. I decided on XFS (smart decision?), so I fire up QTparted format it, chose xfs, a couple of seconds later its done! However this is the output of "fdisk -l":

Device Boot Start End Blocks Id System
/dev/hda1 1 7649 61440561 83 Linux
/dev/hda2 14212 14593 3068415 5 Extended
/dev/hda3 10200 14211 32226390 83 Linux
/dev/hda4 * 7650 10199 20482875 83 Linux
/dev/hda5 14212 14593 3068383+ 82 Linux swap / Solaris

Partition table entries are not in disk order

Disk /dev/sdh: 500.1 GB, 500107862016 bytes
255 heads, 63 sectors/track, 60801 cylinders
Units = cylinders of 16065 * 512 = 8225280 bytes

Device Boot Start End Blocks Id System
/dev/sdh1 2 60801 488376000 f W95 Ext'd (LBA)
/dev/sdh5 2 60801 488375968+ 7 HPFS/NTFS

Disk /dev/sdg: 203.9 GB, 203928109056 bytes
255 heads, 63 sectors/track, 24792 cylinders
Units = cylinders of 16065 * 512 = 8225280 bytes

Device Boot Start End Blocks Id System
/dev/sdg1 1 24792 199141708+ c W95 FAT32 (LBA)

Stating that the FS is still FAT32!! I fire up QTparted again and over there it says its XFS. What the hell is wrong??

Oh and I also don't have normal user writing privelages on it. Everything has to be done via root.

Martin? Naw? Jack? Vla? Grey?? Anybody??

 

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[Martin]

Hey that's great you were able to recover data!

I don't know exactly how much data you have stored on the disk, but if you can move it off that volume temporarily, this is what I would do (never seen that kind of error btw).

1. boot a livecd
2. # cfdisk /dev/{your_drive}
3. partition at will
4. format partitions with mkfs
5. reboot and restore data

xfs is optimal for storing large files, that is files of say >100MB. I haven't used it myself but plenty of people rave about it.

I never use qtparted myself, and though I assume that it's safe, I would feel safer using cfdisk, which is actually just fdisk with a nicer interface. So when you run "fdisk -l" on it later, there's no way fdisk and cfdisk should disagree about the state of your disk.

 

[gray]

I'll have my reservations about qtparted after the experience I described a couple of days ago. Fortunately I figured out a solution: I fired up the Ubuntu LiveCD and ran the installer, then went through the process up until the part where I choose the root partition and all that. After that I cancelled, prompting the installer to tell me that installation failed. After a reboot, everything was back to normal.

After the dozens of solutions I tried, the one that worked was the simplest

 

[V]

all this talk of file systems and loosing data got me thinking..i have all my valueables on my 250gb NTFS drive, i've been thinking of doing some cleaning up and eventually moving most of it on my 120gb drive temporarelly so i can format the 250gb to ext3. is ext3 more reliable or better than ntfs?

i think i heard ntfs is a pain in the ass to recover data.. overall which one is better, reliability-wise?

 

[Martin]

all this talk of file systems and loosing data got me thinking..i have all my valueables on my 250gb NTFS drive, i've been thinking of doing some cleaning up and eventually moving most of it on my 120gb drive temporarelly so i can format the 250gb to ext3. is ext3 more reliable or better than ntfs?

i think i heard ntfs is a pain in the ass to recover data.. overall which one is better, reliability-wise?

I don't know if there is a clear answer to that. I've had my share of misfortunes with ntfs and I don't trust it. As you say, ext3 is far better for recovery.

 

[Rami]

Hey that's great you were able to recover data!

I don't know exactly how much data you have stored on the disk, but if you can move it off that volume temporarily, this is what I would do (never seen that kind of error btw).

1. boot a livecd
2. # cfdisk /dev/{your_drive}
3. partition at will
4. format partitions with mkfs
5. reboot and restore data

xfs is optimal for storing large files, that is files of say >100MB. I haven't used it myself but plenty of people rave about it.

I never use qtparted myself, and though I assume that it's safe, I would feel safer using cfdisk, which is actually just fdisk with a nicer interface. So when you run "fdisk -l" on it later, there's no way fdisk and cfdisk should disagree about the state of your disk.

Will try to do that, when I have the time (and the mood). However I popped in Puppy Linux live CD, just to check what it says the drive is...its XFS also !!

 

[V]

I don't know if there is a clear answer to that. I've had my share of misfortunes with ntfs and I don't trust it. As you say, ext3 is far better for recovery.

hmm..i really don't know, can't decide. if i'd switch to linux completelly, there'd obviously be no doubts, but i can't, gotta dual-boot.

oh well, i'll leave it for some brighter days.

 

[Martin]

You can use ext3 on windows

 

[gray]

Speaking of which, I'm freaking loving ntfs-3g

 

[V]

Speaking of which, I'm freaking loving ntfs-3g

working like a charm? still haven't tried it.

 

[gray]

Yep, absofreakinlutely. A quick install and a one line edit of /etc/fstab and everything Just Works™

 

[V]

loved the "™" touch.

 

[V]

Speaking of which, I'm freaking loving ntfs-3g

it indeed does rock.

 

[V]

i'm lovin my new "separate x view" with my monitor and tv.

btw, why is this thread not sticky?

 

[Marc]

btw, why is this thread not sticky?

Because it´s boring.

 

[JCK]

i'm lovin my new "separate x view" with my monitor and tv.

btw, why is this thread not sticky?

Because, thanks to us, it is always alive and on top of other threads in the section. Let us keep it this way.

Tell us more about the seperate x view, I am thinking of buying a 5" LCD and have it as a seperate display.

 

[V]

Tell us more about the seperate x view, I am thinking of buying a 5" LCD and have it as a seperate display.

5" ??

separate x view is pretty cool. basically you have 2 working displays, in my case one is a tv, and you can do what you want on each one. you set on of the tv's to the right or the left of your primary display so when you move the moves to that side the pointer gets there. it's really practical in my case as i can put on a movie for someone to watch and still do whatever i wnat on the pc.

pretty nifty, i'd say. and very easily done on nvidia, just a few lines in xorg.conf.

 

[JCK]

5" ??

separate x view is pretty cool. basically you have 2 working displays, in my case one is a tv, and you can do what you want on each one. you set on of the tv's to the right or the left of your primary display so when you move the moves to that side the pointer gets there. it's really practical in my case as i can put on a movie for someone to watch and still do whatever i wnat on the pc.

pretty nifty, i'd say. and very easily done on nvidia, just a few lines in xorg.conf.

Dude, I know what dual displays do. My question was how you configured that to work on your system

 

[V]

Dude, I know what dual displays do. My question was how you configured that to work on your system

Tell us more about the seperate x view,

that kind of implied you didn't know what it is.

anywho, here you go

you need the more "complicated way". though i didn't follow it to the bone, what i did was "sudo nvidia-settings", turn on the separate x view option from there and saved the xorg.conf file. then edited the file and under section screen just put composite and use PAL-b.

 

[Rami]

that kind of implied you didn't know what it is.

anywho, here you go

you need the more "complicated way". though i didn't follow it to the bone, what i did was "sudo nvidia-settings", turn on the separate x view option from there and saved the xorg.conf file. then edited the file and under section screen just put composite and use PAL-b.

Lol man, you just created a new need for me. I have an old 15" flat screen lying around and don't know what to do with it...Now I know