Help please read

[rockey3]

Hey folks I messed up my kubuntu7 and I want to do a fresh install. But first I want to save all my stuff on an external HD. All I get when I try to boot up is command prompt. How exactly do I mount the HD and what commands do I have to put in for it to copy all of my stuff.

Please tell me everything, don’t assume I know; for I am an absolute beginner with Linux. Please help thank you

[bodiless]

Re: Help please read

I am not sure if this helps since i've never done it but I guess thats the theory...

Plug your hard drive in (is a usb drive?) and do:

sudo /var/log/messages

You will see something like:

kernel: SCSI device sdb: 499199 512-byte hdwr sectors (256 MB)

So your hard drive can be found under /dev/sdb (note that you may have a different entry here).
If you do now:

sudo fdisk -l /dev/sdb

you should see a list with the partitions in that drive. Lets assume that you want to copy the files in partition sdb2, wich is a fat32 formated partition, then you need to mount this partition.

Go to /mnt/ folder (cd /mnt/) and do:

sudo mkdir backup_folder

(name it what ever you want). Now you need to mount the partition onto that folder with:

mount -t vfat /dev/sda1 /mnt/backup_folder

(note that the partition you want to mount may not be a fat32 partition but something else. You need to adjust accordingly).

Now that you mounted the drive try to explore it with “cd /mnt/backup_folder/” If you are able to navigate in there and do things your are ready.

Now copy the folders you want recursively with commands like:

cp -R /home/rockey3/any_folder /mnt/backup_folder/any_folder_you_created_in_there

Hope that helps