HELP!!! update cost me my home drive!!!

[Cyber_rader]

I updated a few days ago to Ultimate Edition 3.5, I did the exact same things I do every time (rename old home folder then transfer files over after install, excluding old program data other then firefox) I did some updates and had to reboot. upon reboot my home drive has gone missing. I have almost 500 gigs on a 2tb seagate hard drive of very important data and files that I must recover. I have tried using parted magic to recover the files (partial success) Ddrescue is able to read and copy a percentage of the data to another drive (my next largest drive at 500gigs. But upon mount of the drive that the files are copied to the system crashes or the drive fails to mount due to an error with the drive. I need help getting these files off the drive,

[ddrescue output from one of my recent attempts]

root@partedmagic:~# ddrescue -s100GiB -v /dev/sdi1 /dev/sda1 --force

GNU ddrescue 1.16
About to copy 107374 MBytes from /dev/sdi1 to /dev/sda1
Starting positions: infile = 0 B, outfile = 0 B
Copy block size: 128 sectors Initial skip size: 128 sectors
Sector size: 512 Bytes

Press Ctrl-C to interrupt
rescued: 107374 MB, errsize: 0 B, current rate: 22216 kB/s
ipos: 107374 MB, errors: 0, average rate: 33304 kB/s
opos: 107374 MB, time since last successful read: 0 s
Finished

I do not care if I have to extract the data from an ISO file or access the files manually via a file manager. But I am at a loss for what to do now. I do not want to do foremost because several files will not be recovered due to its lack at understanding odd formats and its habit at renaming files to a number system (123456789.jpg) I am limited to using partedmagic via live run disk because I need all my internal hard drive space to recover my files. please anyone with an idea on how to get my data back, commands, better software, magical incantations. or other methods please let me know. or any idea on how to use ddrescue to output only the file data to a folder (i can not find any info on how to do that on the site)

By the way there is nothing wrong with the hardware as i hope you can see. the drive does run i can format it (of course i wont) i do have several distros like BT5r4 if they can be of any help

[Micro]

Can you please post the error message? Do you have an external dock for the hard drive? Have you verified by the amount of space used on the hard drive, if in fact the data was overwritten? Have you checked the hidden files? Sorry for the blast, just thinking out loud. Just some advice for the future about partitioning. ex. If you have a 80GB drive on your machine, best practice would be to partition as follows. 20 GB to / and Swap if you use it. Then the remaining 60GB to a slice what I call Data with the path of /home/username/Data. Then point all folders to Data partition and when you reformat you just install the 20GB partition and all still remains in Data. Messing with the /home since there are underlined software files in it, can be a pain and should be avoided. This method is full proof and I have been using it for yrs.

[Xanayoshi]

There is a live distro called Rescatux that has saved me many times in my partition experimenting. It contains super grub 2, which on its own is very handy but does much more with the Rescapp wizard. Works with Win mbr too.

http://www.supergrubdisk.org/rescatux/

[Xanayoshi]

Can you please post the error message? Do you have an external dock for the hard drive? Have you verified by the amount of space used on the hard drive, if in fact the data was overwritten? Have you checked the hidden files? Sorry for the blast, just thinking out loud. Just some advice for the future about partitioning. ex. If you have a 80GB drive on your machine, best practice would be to partition as follows. 20 GB to / and Swap if you use it. Then the remaining 60GB to a slice what I call Data with the path of /home/username/Data. Then point all folders to Data partition and when you reformat you just install the 20GB partition and all still remains in Data. Messing with the /home since there are underlined software files in it, can be a pain and should be avoided. This method is full proof and I have been using it for yrs.

What I like to do(keep in mind that I am insane) is keep an external with it's own OS. The partition setup for this is swap first (5 to 10gb), then root (20gb usually covers it), and finally home (the rest, 200gb to 1 tb or..whatever). On this external home is where I move my backup, mass media etc. In this way if I kill my internal drive(s) I still basically have a full on working PC and still have my data. The OS is of course particular to the computer installed on(this would be on the 20gb root partition) but the home(the rest) is accessible through any other Linux PC.

Note: Virtualbox can kill here. Basically, if you are runing VB inside the external OS, don't use your USB ports that the OS is hooked up to.

[Micro]

Yes you are definately insane. JK lol. Whatever works for you Xanayoshi. I guess the connection state would determine how well your OS will run then. ex. eSATA external connected OS would out perform usb connected external OS. None the less very cool out of box thinking What I do is rsync my Data slice on /home/micro/Data to an external eSATA on a schedule for daily incremental and full backup weekly. Then all i have to do is periodically check my Drive to make sure space is available. Really don't have to as my backup will warn me, I just like to keep a 10% free space on them for safety as I tend to download large files frequently...

[Cyber_rader]

[error message]
(normal mount method)
udevil: /dev/sdk1 is known to mount - running mount as current user
udevil: warning 45: options ignored for device in fstab (or specify mount point)
mount: /dev/sdk1 already mounted or /media/sdk1 busy

(Root mount method)
/usr/bin/udisks --mount /dev/sdk1 --mount-options noexec,nosuid,noatime

Mount failed: Did not receive a reply. Possible causes include: the remote application did not send a reply, the message bus security policy blocked the reply, the reply timeout expired, or the network connection was broken.

---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

the system is running on a live OS as root (just so everyone knows)

no i have not overwritten the data i refuse to do any form of format or data wipe on the drive, when i install i do not allow gparted to format my home disk (i have had no issues with my install method since 2.4 to 3.4 all the distros i have used)

the way i have my pc setup is. Master drive 500gig -> 200mib Boot, 75gib Root, data drive to fill the gap then 3gib Swap space, i was told by a friend and gentoo user to only make the swap 1.5x the ram

i have never restored any of the hidden data off my home drive to a new os for the fact it can cause issues only the firefox and i forgot about my skype folder (but i know what im doing with saving those)

There is a live distro called Rescatux

Thank you for that information i will download and try that

is keep an external with it's own OS

i use to have my own universal portable os hard drive but i canned the device to build another computer, right now its full of files off my secondary 500gig hard drive to free up as much space off both of my on board hard drives as well as moving some of my files over to my old xbox org (it has about 100 gigs of data on its hard drive now) and yes it is a hard modded xbox org

and i have nothing i can use for a backup at the moment

[pam]

Hi cyber_rader

Please also list your signature in your profile..

[Cyber_rader]

What do you mean my signature on my profile the line at have that listed on m

[pam]

your system specifications.
mine is below

[Cyber_rader]

Asus-a8n-e mobo
Thermal take 430 watt psu
Amd 3800 socket 939 single core at 2.6ghz
Duel DVD+-rw drives (lg and light on)
Multi card reader
2 500gig wdc sata hdds
1 2tb Seagate hdd
Zip drive
2 gigs ddr1 ram
Ati radion 3450 HD video card
4 port fire wire pci card