Newbie Nightmare Update --- might RAID 0 + 1 have saved my data?

[pendetaantonlat]

An update to the message below. The bad news: Kubuntu was definitely installed over XP. The XP installer shows only the two Linux partitions. However, I'm wondering if Kubuntu may have been installed on only one of the four 350GB hard drives. What deceived me into thinking I was installing on the external drive instead of the RAID drives is the fact that the installer only recognized 320 GB of available drive space, while the 0 + 1 RAID reconfiguration yields almost 700 GB.

Is it possible that the other 3 drives still contain XP and my data?

If I had the NVIDIA RAID 0 + 1 controller rebuild the drives might this restore XP? or would this simply destroy the data (if it is still there).

Is there some other solution to this problem?

I'm going to wait at least another 12 hours or so before reinstalling XP, just in case there might be some chance of someone knowing how to save XP and my data. I have a backup, but it is several days old, and it will be very hard to redo the work done during those days. Also, some important e-mails and other recent data would be lost.

Thanks in advance for any help.

========= The original message =============================

I was trying to install Kubuntu on an external USB SATA drive on an AMD 64x2 machine running XP on a RAID 0 + 1 configuration. I booted from the CD live acpi=off. Then clicked on the install icon in the upper left hand corner. I assumed that the installer would not be able to read the RAID drives and would install Kubuntu on the USB drive. The installation seemed to go fine, but when I rebooted, I got a message that reads:

GRUB GRUB Loading stage1.5.

And that is as far as the loading can proceed. Questions:

1. Have I made a wrong assumption and overwritten XP on the RAID partition?
2. Is this just a boot up problem that can be solved?
3. Is there a solution? and if so what is it?

This is my first experience with Kubuntu and my first post here. Sorry to start off with what has been for me a nightmare. But any help will be deeply appreciated.

What I was hoping is to have the computer boot up Kubuntu when the external USB drive is attached, otherwise to boot up XP. I should have posted here first to get some advice, but hindsight is always 20/20.

[Qqmike]

Re: Newbie Nightmare Update --- might RAID 0 + 1 have saved my data?

I’m afraid I don’t know enough about raid to be much help. The other factor you’ve got is the external USB, but often that can be dealt with ok in GRUB (but is sometimes tricky).

Just a small thing you might do while waiting for some real help here:
Plug everything in, including your USB.
Using your Live Kubuntu CD, get into Kubuntu (live), open Konsole (a terminal), and type the command
sudo fdisk –lu
then press Enter,
(“-lu” is minus “l” as in “list,” and “u” as in “units”)

You can post the output here (copy/paste it here using a live Kubuntu browser, probably Konqueror).
It will show you how Kubuntu is seeing your drives, partition, and filesystems,
and it may help the real helper.

[pendetaantonlat]

Re: Newbie Nightmare Update --- might RAID 0 + 1 have saved my data?

Qqmike, thanks for replying. I ran sudo fdisk -lu as you suggested. I was unable to get the results out of the computer as floppy drive doesn't work, nor does CD drive or Internet connection. I composing this on a different computer.

However, examining the output I see that Linux is on sda and sdc; sdb and sdd contain no valid partition table. (The external drive connected by USB does not show up.) So, it appears to me that XP is gone. Am I right?

[pendetaantonlat]

Re: Newbie Nightmare Update --- might RAID 0 + 1 have saved my data?

One more update: Seeing that there seemed to be no answer to my problem, I started to reinstall XP. However, the last screen which contains the button to install show this information which gives me a very tiny bit of hope:

610486 MB Disk 0 at 1 on bus 0 on nvraid [mbr]

C: Partition1 [Unknown] 293673 MB (293672 MB free)
Unpartitioned space 11570 MB
Unpartitioned space 305243 MB

This seems to say that the Kubuntu installer created a new partition, but did not install Kubuntu on that partition (all but one MB of the partition is still free and the rest of the space is unpartitioned). I think that probably when the partition was created, all data was lost. However, just in case I am wrong about this, I'm making this post and waiting a few more hours to see if someone can give me further hope, or else tell me to quit wasting time and bite the bullet and start reinstalling.

[Qqmike]

Re: Newbie Nightmare Update --- might RAID 0 + 1 have saved my data?

Based on the output from sudo fdisk -lu, it sure looks like there's no Windows. Windows should show up as an NTFS file system.

Lots of folks here use GParted Live CD to do their partitioning. It always seems to work and is easy to understand.

Then, when installing Kubuntu, choose the manual method (or whatever it's called), not the automatic install method. That way you can select the partition(s) you created using GParted to specify where Kubuntu, the Swap, the /home, should all go.

You might want to scan th following How-to, as it explains how GRUB fits into an installation with or without Windows being present. It's basic, and it's based on a basic hardware setup, but it'll give you some conceptual insights for your more complex setup (RAID, external USB).

How To GRUB Methods - Toolkit
http://kubuntuforums.net/forums/inde...opic=3081671.0