Backing up a netbook with the help of CB on USB [End of line reached]

gosa · 2010-04-07 18:22:52

Hi All!

I know that I'm probably a bit far off from what this forum is normally for, but since my experiences so far is that this is the nicest Linux forum on the planet I thought that I'd ask anyway.
- Can't get worse than being sent somewhere else with my questions, right?

So here goes:

I'm trying to help my girlfriends sister with her Acer Aspire One. It's the 8-something inches version running Linpus on an SSD.
(She was ready to throw it away, so an amateur trying is better than nothing I guess)

The problem is that this little machine stops at the "blue-ish" Acer boot screen (POST seems to be ok) and just hangs there.
Now, my Linux knowledge is not very good beyond the "happy experimantal user" part, so error checking this baby is going to be a bit tough.

I have the Acer recovery disk, and I managed to find instructions on how to get that onto an USB stick, so that part is all well, but I'm not sure on how to get her stuff from the Acer onto an USB stick.
I've booted the Acer without problems with an USB-stick containing the Crunchbang Live "cd", so the hardware seems to be alright.

- But where do I find her stuff? Opening the Linpus drive in the filemanager (as Root) gives me the normal folder layout,under "/media/linpus" but looking through all these folder is really testing my patience...
Where is stuff that's saved to a drive in a Linux system when you look at this system with an "outside view" (booting from something else)?

Next question - this sh*t probably (I assume) comes from the lack of an update or from a bad update or something in between - is there any way of trying to error check the installation before I blow it all away for a restore? What applications can I use? Any nice "do it yourself" cd images I can download and put on a usb stick? Any other solution?

If someone can point me in the right direction It would be highly appreciated (plus it would give me some extra points here at home) big_smile

Thanks in advance!

Last edited by gosa (2010-04-13 11:55:38)

tonyoptical · 2010-04-07 19:47:48

Hi

This is what i would do:

- Create an image of the ssd to an external usb-hd by means of Clonezilla live.
- Use Clonezilla live to restore the image to a virtual machine (Virtual Box) on your computer.
- Mount the restored partition to read /extracts /copy the important content.
- I don't know Linpus but i guess you can find her data in /home ...
- Check by means of midnight commanders search file feature for any file name which you can remember for sure - this may give you an indication where the other stuff is ...
- Get rid of Linpus on the Acer and do a fresh install of #! - ;-)

das88 · 2010-04-08 02:17:47

I like tonyoptical's proposal but if you're not really keen on the virtual machine you could check out the ultimate boot cd:
http://www.ultimatebootcd.com/

It's got a whole bunch of recovery tools on it and I was able to put it on a USB drive using unetbootin with no trouble (although I would recommend going with the 5-point-something version for USB... it doesn't like to run some of the utilities from the USB stick). There's disk image/restore software there as well as data recovery in case her files are actually somehow missing. There are also a couple of recovery operating systems in both linux and dos flavors.

Good luck!
Devin

anonymous · 2010-04-08 02:23:15

When you mount the internal drive from a live CD/USB, it will probably be under /media. So look for something like /media/disk/home/username.

gosa · 2010-04-08 07:15:19

anonymous wrote:

When you mount the internal drive from a live CD/USB, it will probably be under /media. So look for something like /media/disk/home/username.

Tried that... booting from a live-usb with crunchbang I get a partition called "linpus" mounted in the filemanager as /media/linpus but opening the home directory there - /media/linpus/home/ - I get an empty folder.

I do know for a fact that this chick has photos that she wants to recover, but If I start asking her about directories she's going to look at me like I'm crazy. That I'm not completely fluent in her language (she's Spanish by birth, I still learning after 3,5 years in Spain) doesn't really help either.

I'll see what the Ultimate Boot CD can do about finding those files, and someone also recommended to try to look into grub to see if that might be the problem.

Thanks

anonymous · 2010-04-08 14:35:34

Did you make sure to show hidden files?

gosa · 2010-04-08 17:11:43

anonymous wrote:

Did you make sure to show hidden files?

-Yup I did... nothing there.

Another note:

Tried to clone the SSD with the help of Clonezilla and Trueimage home.
-None of them wanted to do this, and out of those two programs Trueimage was the one giving me a message I understood, which mentioned something about not being able to read from "block ***"
(There were quite a few of them)

How is this thing with read errors and SSD, can this be fixed with restore/reformat/reinstall or should I consider this disk as not worth working with?
It is an 8gb SSD, so I imagine I can find a replacement at a fair price... or not?

das88 · 2010-04-08 18:01:05

I've got a dell mini 9 and just had my ssd quit out of the blue two weeks ago. I spent most of a day trying to confirm that it was in fact the ssd... every disk diagnostic/data recovery program I could find just sort of panicked when it tried to access the disk and I wasn't getting any clear errors or consistent behavior. I had dell send me a new one and it worked so I'm assuming that it was the ssd, although still I don't know why it quit so my main operating system is now a full install of #! 9.04 on a 16gb usb drive. The new drive hasn't had problems as of yet though.

Recovering data from the drive I had is outside of my current skill set. I couldn't get access to the disk at all. It sounds like it's a little more hopeful in your case though and there is a data recovery tool on the UBCD that's specifically meant to recover photos so maybe that will do what you need? I'm not sure if it would also give you a path for the directory they were stored in but it's probably worth a try.

Last edited by das88 (2010-04-08 18:01:58)

gosa · 2010-04-08 19:54:13

das88 wrote:

It sounds like it's a little more hopeful in your case though and there is a data recovery tool on the UBCD that's specifically meant to recover photos so maybe that will do what you need? I'm not sure if it would also give you a path for the directory they were stored in but it's probably worth a try.

Sorry for asking a stupid question here, but what tool would that be? Because either most of the tools on ubcd doesn't seem to recognize a ssd or I'm not knowing what the heck I'm doing...
(probably the latter)

das88 · 2010-04-08 19:57:34

hmm...

I'll boot it later today and see what it looks like for me. Sorry I can't be more helpful!

Devin

luvva_cuppa · 2010-04-08 23:04:26

Slitaz is a great mini linux distro which runs from a usb and only uses ram. It can be used to recover data from broken systems; it would be worth a try seeing whether it would give you direct access to the directories and files on the ssd.

gosa · 2010-04-09 04:32:46

das88 wrote:

hmm...
I'll boot it later today and see what it looks like for me. Sorry I can't be more helpful!
Devin

Don't worry about it... I think I found it. The program is called Photorec.
Didn't have time to try it yet though, I'll post an update when I've done that.

And - Thanks for your help so far... I've got something t owork with, and no matter if it turns out ok or not in the end - At least I got plenty of help trying...

oupsemma · 2010-04-09 04:50:13

Clonezilla or other software are not even needed, you can just use GParted to copy the partition where you want to.

When using your CrunchBang live, start GParted and when you right-click on the Linpus partition, you will be offered a 'copy' item; then you just have to paste the copied partition to another USB stick (size bigger than Linpus) and there it will be.

After that, when using PhotoRec, choose carefully which kind of files it is going to search and save, otherwise it will take ages and bring you tons of data.
(Been using PhotoRec a few weeks ago to rescue pictures from a borked HD, and that was nice to have all these lost pictures back again; only had a lot of work sorting them out of all the other images that were on the drive).

Last edited by oupsemma (2010-04-09 04:51:01)

gosa · 2010-04-09 07:47:38

oupsemma wrote:

Clonezilla or other software are not even needed, you can just use GParted to copy the partition where you want to.
When using your CrunchBang live, start GParted and when you right-click on the Linpus partition, you will be offered a 'copy' item; then you just have to paste the copied partition to another USB stick (size bigger than Linpus) and there it will be.

Woah, thanks for that tip - had no idea that was possible. Doing the copy/paste right now but I'm kind of "stuck in the "check file system for errors"-phase. It seem to take forever though... didn't know scanning a 8gb drive could be so slow.
(I assume I will get an error message eventually if it won't work because the disk is too corrupted, right?)

oupsemma · 2010-04-09 08:37:50

If it's PhotoRec you're talking about, yes, it take ages! And, yes, when there are errors, you are told so.
If I were you, I would let the searching and recovering pictures process run all night; it took me a whole week-end to get the pictures files plus some other data files I wanted back, and sorting all the recovered files takes a really long time too; but it's woth it!

gosa · 2010-04-09 09:10:23

oupsemma wrote:

If it's PhotoRec you're talking about, yes, it take ages! !

Nope, I'm talking about gparted... been running for 2h30min now and it's still in the "check file system"-phase...

oupsemma · 2010-04-09 09:48:35

With GParted, just copy and paste the partition on another USB drive, don't check the file system with it.

This way:
- you will have a freed Acer, on which you can install any distro to have it working
- let PhotoRec and TestDisk do the checking work on the copied partition, and the recovery of the wanted files

gosa · 2010-04-09 10:04:30

oupsemma wrote:

With GParted, just copy and paste the partition on another USB drive, don't check the file system with it.
This way:
- you will have a freed Acer, on which you can install any distro to have it working
- let PhotoRec and TestDisk do the checking work on the copied partition, and the recovery of the wanted files

Well.. I admit that I don't know as much about gparted as I want to, but I didn't even get the option to skip the check.

Let's back up:
I chose to copy the partition I want to salvage - in this case it's /dev/sda1 - and click copy
I switch to the usb-stick where I want to put the partition - /dev/sdb - and click paste (have to delete the old one first)
I choose apply all pending operations from the menu
Now - one step in all this is to prepare the destination, the other is to copy the partition from one disk to the other. In this process I get a step saying:

check file system on /dev/sda1 for errors and (if possible) fix them
e2fck -f -y -v /dev/sda1

Are you saying I can avoid that step somehow?

Last edited by gosa (2010-04-09 10:06:28)

oupsemma · 2010-04-09 12:03:01

Once you have right-clicked on the Linpus partition in GParted, to have the Linpus being copied, the next step is, still using GParted for that, to paste it in another USB stick which has to be empty (or at least one part of it with no partition at all, and this absence of partition must be bigger than the 8GB of LInpus, otherwise that wouldn't work) and copy it there.

Trying to get you some screenshots, if I find some.
http://gparted.sourceforge.net/larry/move/move.htm

Tutorial for PhotoRec: http://www.psychocats.net/ubuntucat/rec … etedfiles/

Last edited by oupsemma (2010-04-09 12:08:55)

oupsemma · 2010-04-09 12:18:48

May be if you're blocked at the checking sda1 for errors, you could use Palimpsest http://www.linux.com/community/blogs/ne … sest.html, also known as gnome-disk-utility http://packages.debian.org/testing/gnome-disk-utility

Fedora distributions have it pre-installed and it gives you detailed informations and do thoroughly examination of the drives, with SMART.

Otherwise, the other solution would be to download an Ubuntu distro, dd it to a USB stick and when running it live install TestDisk and PhotoRec to manage the whole process. the Acer would have to spend the week-end with the stick plugged in and rescue going on; but this way, you wouldn't have to move the data

gosa · 2010-04-09 12:25:54

oupsemma wrote:

Once you have right-clicked on the Linpus partition in GParted, to have the Linpus being copied, the next step is, still using GParted for that, to paste it in another USB stick which has to be empty (or at least one part of it with no partition at all, and this absence of partition must be bigger than the 8GB of LInpus, otherwise that wouldn't work) and copy it there (no checking is ever involved in the process).
Trying to get you some screenshots, if I find some.
http://gparted.sourceforge.net/larry/move/move.htm

I understand all this with the copy paste, but I am telling you - I've tried this three times now and the part "check file system blablabla... " is part of this process. Every time.

After choosing "edit"-> "apply all operations" and confirming in the dialogue box that pops up I always get the line "check file system on...."
(This is in the actual "Applying all pending operations"-window)

Clicking the "details" option shows that first step is to "calibrate /dev/sda1" which seem to pass (nothing wrong with the destination)
The second step is this "check file system.... " part - which doesn't seem to go anywhere...

- Maybe we're running two different versions of gparted (I'm using the one in crunchbang live 9.04) but this is what happens.

Another note:

I tried typing

sudo e2fsck -f -y -v /dev/sda1

in a terminal window, and the result gave me (don't know why this doesn't show in gparted, the -v stands for verbose after all) that e2fsck gets stuck in a loop - it reports errors, it clear the i"illegal blocks" that are faulty, concludes that there's to many "illegal blocks", it restarts, does it all over again, and again, and again without actually changing anything.

- starting to feel the photos are gone....

gosa · 2010-04-09 13:07:47

Ok - follow up question:

My it-guy here at work tells me that the reason why I can't see anything in /linpus/home/ is because I'm trying to access this folder from another account (livecd) so I don't have privileges for it.

True or false?

ErSandro · 2010-04-09 13:22:38

I think it's false. Using a LiveCD you're the administrator (a.k.a. god).

Never had problems mounting and accessing filesystems this way.

Last edited by ErSandro (2010-04-09 13:23:36)

oupsemma · 2010-04-09 13:54:52

Well, if you are stuck in the checking file process, and are running the CrunchBang live USB, you could install TestDisk (from the same company which provides PhotoRec)
http://www.howtoforge.com/data_recovery_with_testdisk
http://www.cgsecurity.org/wiki/TestDisk

Edit: it's listed in CrunchBang's Synaptic

Last edited by oupsemma (2010-04-09 13:55:34)

gosa · 2010-04-09 14:11:06

oupsemma wrote:

Well, if you are stuck in the checking file process, and are running the CrunchBang live USB, you could install TestDisk (from the same company which provides PhotoRec)
http://www.howtoforge.com/data_recovery_with_testdisk
http://www.cgsecurity.org/wiki/TestDisk
Edit: it's listed in CrunchBang's Synaptic

Thanks for the tip... I'll give it a go when I get home from work this afternoon. (To late to start something "bigger" now...)

CrunchBang Linux

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#1 2010-04-07 18:22:52

Backing up a netbook with the help of CB on USB [End of line reached]

#2 2010-04-07 19:47:48

Re: Backing up a netbook with the help of CB on USB [End of line reached]

#3 2010-04-08 02:17:47

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#4 2010-04-08 02:23:15

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#5 2010-04-08 07:15:19

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#6 2010-04-08 14:35:34

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#7 2010-04-08 17:11:43

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#8 2010-04-08 18:01:05

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