Recovering data from OpenSUSE drive

Hi all!

I wonder if anyone can help me.

I’ve accidently begun installing Ubuntu Studio onto my OpenSUSE drive :shame: I stupidly forgot to to swap my hard drive cables around.

Luckily, the Ubuntu Studio install failed before I noticed the problem, but I need to access the SUSE drive to pull some date off of it. Whats the best way of doing this?

I used a program in windows XP to try and pull the data (mainly holiday snaps) off the drive, but it only works on NTFS file systems, so didn’t get me what I need.

How can I access the data on the linux partitions? I’m fairly certain I was using 11.2, which after a bit of googling seems touse the EXT3 file format. Correct?

I’m in over my head here really, as you can probably tell, but what my limited knowledge leads me to believe is that the Ubuntu installer overwrote my partition table (is that right?) but left all the data there still.

Ideally I need a program very similar to the one that I used, but which works for the SUSE filesystem, and runs under XP (my only working OS at the moment)

Many appoligies for the ramble, and thank you for any help you can offer!

Steve

I would start by looking at PhotoRec - CGSecurity looking only, read up on it. Wait for advice from others, be patient. It is on this liveCD Parted Magic | Download Parted Magic software for free at SourceForge.net which has a colection of useful tools for this type of situation.

Also can you be more specific, the install failed at what point, what error messages?

I’m fairly certain I was using 11.2, which after a bit of googling seems touse the EXT3 file format. Correct?

The default file system for 11.2 is ext4.

I’m in over my head here really, as you can probably tell, but what my limited knowledge leads me to believe is that the Ubuntu installer overwrote my partition table (is that right?) but left all the data there still.

I can’t tell from the info given, but if that is all that was done, Test Disk may be the tool to use (also on the Parted Magic liveCD ).

Thanks guys.

As it happens, PhotoRec and TestDisk is what my googling had brought me to, so it’s nice to be re-assured that I’m on the right track. It’s just running now. I’ll let you know how I get on.

The UbuntuStudio installer failed with the message: Installation step failed: Select and install software

No further detail is given, and I’m hoping that seeing as my Windows files were intact, my Linux ones are too.

Thanks for the help!

Steve

A couple of questions, You can boot to windows, did you have to reinstall/repair the windows the boot loader?
Or did you enter the bios to change the boot order to boot windows?
Have you tried a linux liveCD to see if the files can be accessed?

Well, I can only boot into windows as I have it on a seperate drive.

PhotoRec is doing it’s thing now. It’d hard to figure out which part of the drive to scan though, so I will just let it do it’s thing for a while and see if it returns the right files.

I hadn’t thought of the Live CD idea, I will give that a go also.

Thanks

Well PhotoRec seems to be working fine!

I’m seeing all my lost holiday snaps so I am dead happy.

Many thanks guys

Steve

I’m very happy to read that, I noticed your first post on this thread was your first post on the openSUSE forums, welcome.

You should NOT do that. Never switch cables before, after, and during! lol!
In Ubuntu, openSUSE or any other distro, always choose “expert mode”, which is often the last option and has different names, such as “Create partition setup” under openSUSE or “Custom partitioning” under Fedora or Ubuntu (don’t remember). Anyway if you chose this option and pay attention on the drives and partitions you select then, none of the Linux distros will overwrite another one nor anything else.

Apart from welcoming you too, I may carefully point to the fact that most people here advise to make backups in general and in particular if you are going to do things like installs, partitioning, etc. When you recovered from this happy ending, consider a backup schema.

I may carefully point to the fact that most people here advise to make backups in general and in particular if you are going to do things like installs, partitioning, etc. When you recovered from this happy ending, consider a backup schema.
I got caught with not having a proper backup, not long after we got our first computer, we had a backup of most stuff, but not all, including a few of the family photos, we also lost our 8 year old lad not long after that, those photos are gone. Yes ALWAYS BACKUP.I don’t loose important data now though!

I don’t believe it takes as much as that for someone to recognise the need to backup, I think the OP has figured it out!

Welcome!
Glad to see that you’re able to recover your data with PhotoRec. I’d also like to recommend EXT2FSD.EXE available on SourceForge
Ext2 File System Driver for Windows | Download Ext2 File System Driver for Windows software for free at SourceForge.net

This runs on Windows thru Windows 7 and allows you to read/write to Linux partitions from Windows. Once EXT2FSD.EXE is installed on Windows you should be able to copy the files from your OpenSuSe to Windows or other storage media.