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**lmilano** · Oct 01, 2009, 02:28 PM

Re: Help - Disaster struck !

I think the easiest thing to try is this: can you boot from the damaged drive into recovery mode? It will give you an option to repair the filesystem (that is, the disk).

If that doesn't work, maybe you can boot in recovery mode with the good drive, choose the same option to repair a damaged drive, and see if you get to choose to repair the damaged drive.

If none of these things work, we'll still be here for ya

Good luck!

**arochester** · Oct 01, 2009, 02:34 PM

Re: Help - Disaster struck !

If the damaged disk is in your computer can you not just try to navigate to it using Dolphin File Manager?

To copy things off you might need to start Dolphin from Konsole Terminal Program with the command:

kdesudo dolphin

**Tim036** · Oct 01, 2009, 04:30 PM

Re: Help - Disaster struck !

Two good ideas ! Thank you both !

How do you:-

I think the easiest thing to try is this: can you boot from the damaged drive into recovery mode?

Its gets into log om screen - then what ?

Tim

**lmilano** · Oct 01, 2009, 08:00 PM

Re: Help - Disaster struck !

NO, if you select in the boot menu the recovery mode, it should boot up quickly to a bunch of options, one of each is to fix the filesystem. Have you gotten there?

This is how it looks:
http://www.psychocats.net/ubuntu/resetpassword

**Tim036** · Oct 02, 2009, 06:17 AM

Re: Help - Disaster struck !

Many thanks for the info !

I tried that but the keyboard still would not work !

But during this mornings 'Bad Day at the Office' moments I noted:-

The keyboard is a bit weird ! If I hole an alpha hey down for 30 seconds or so it starts working filling the screen up the its character ! Interesting but unusable.

I cloned a July Backup drive and started settling that in, but as I noticed the mouse was still OK, I pulled in a USB2 drive and copied loads of data across especially my latest Bookmarks ! Also 'My Documents'.

So the recovery is sort of OK !

On the way the PC turned itself off mid data transfer and refused to come back on !

I let it cool off for half an hour and the Fan RPM monitor which died a year ago sprung to life - so a replacement PC may not be needed after all !

The UPS showed its batteries were duff ! Only a year old and I replaced that !

So half a day later I'm on Internet again on my PC.

But how to fix this sort of fault is a major curiosity.

Many thanks again for all the tips,

A happy,

Tim

**lmilano** · Oct 02, 2009, 06:51 AM

Re: Help - Disaster struck !

Great!

What I personally do is to always have two large hard drives, and every night I do an automatic incremental back up of the user data (not the system data) from the one I use to the spare one. Incremental meaning only the stuff that changed is backed up.

For this to work you need to have the home directory (/home) as a separate partition. Incidentally, I also leave space for a root partition in both disks, so I can at any point in time switch to the second disk if the first one dies (it never happened, but I am prepared

)

**Tim036** · Oct 02, 2009, 07:24 AM

Re: Help - Disaster struck !

I'm not sure I have the skill to set that up.

I can't navigate from one drive to the next successfully. Where does sdb live ?

My PC has 3 cradle slots so easy to arrange and another PC can do a bit copy of an entire drive. Took 108 minutes to clone a 320GB drive this morning.

So it would be easy to have 3 drives running. But without being able to access the others.........

I prefer to transfer folders as a back up as to me its more trustworthy than incremental updates, but cloning is absolute ! I'm just very conservative.

So idiot level clues to access sdb and sdc drives and the Data on them would be greatly appreciated !

: )))

Tim

**flarson** · Oct 02, 2009, 07:42 AM

Re: Help - Disaster struck !

I think your keyboard problem is that slow keys got activated. If you boot into the problem system and hold down the shift key you should get a dialogue box that asks if you want to disable slow keys. Disable slow keys and see if your keyboard doesn't behave better.

**lmilano** · Oct 02, 2009, 08:06 AM

Re: Help - Disaster struck !

Originally posted by Tim036

I'm not sure I have the skill to set that up.

And you shouldn't, linux is not for experts anymore, much more so the *buntu family. There are a bunch of graphical backup utilities. This is one:
http://sweemengs-tech-world.blogspot...-on-linux.html

So idiot level clues to access sdb and sdc drives and the Data on them would be greatly appreciated !

: )))

This should be configured easily from the System Settings (there was a Disks and Filesystems tool). It used to be like this but was unfortunately removed in KDE4. I'll check in karmic. Otherwise, anyone knows of a graphical, end user tool to mount partitions without fsking around in fstab? I'll look around myself.

Cheers!

**Tim036** · Oct 02, 2009, 08:25 AM

Re: Help - Disaster struck !

Gulp ! backup thing I'll look at. Copy and Paste or drag and drop is as far as I've been using so far !

Really appreciate the SLOW key tip as well !

Tim

**lmilano** · Oct 02, 2009, 08:25 AM

Re: Help - Disaster struck !

Apparently there is a partition manager for KDE:
http://docs.kde.org/development/en/e...sermanual.html

Is it available in the repositories? I'll give it a shot tonight, but feel to try it out yourself.

The disks and their partitions should also show on the side bar in Dolphin, but you probably can't configure them on a permanent basis from there.

Best!

**Tim036** · Oct 02, 2009, 08:38 AM

Re: Help - Disaster struck !

Hardy Heron is KDE3 ? If anything is specific to KDE4 I won't be able to use it.

Tim

**lmilano** · Oct 02, 2009, 09:10 AM

Re: Help - Disaster struck !

Are you kidding? You are in hardy? Just go to System Settings and look for the Disks and Filesystems thing I mentioned 8)

**Tim036** · Oct 04, 2009, 01:48 AM

Re: Help - Disaster struck !

The PC died ! Maybe power supply maybe over heated CPU. Spares won't arrive til mid week.

I've switched to another PC but I've forgotten my Admin password.

Is there any way of resetting it ?

Any thoughts very welcome !

Tim

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