Hiya Everybody

Woo hoo! :D

Yes, use the umount command before closing the terminal, after you finished looking (or copying files).

Next time you don't create the win folder... just don't delete it. All you'll have to do is mount it again like you just did.

Woo hoo! :D
 


Well, you could umount in a new terminal too, if you happen to close that one. Not a big deal really. Or you can just power down the computer too. I don't think it will mount it again automatically when you boot up, but I might be wrong. Being read-only is a very safe way to work with it anyway.

If you want to later erase the drive and use it for Linux storage, we'll get into that when you're ready. I know your first goal is to save your stuff, and you should be able to copy anything from the drive that you need.
 
okay lots of folders, but all empty, except for a ton of data files for nvidia, .ini, .data and so on. boohoo. shows 344 gb free space. it was actually almost full. may have to take it to someone to try to recover. thanks a lot for all the effort. think i'll hop on civ5 and kill everyone.
again thanks
 
Well, that's the worst news I've heard all day (so far, but it ain't over yet). Very sorry to hear that. Sounds like there is still 150GB of data though, and I wonder what that might be? Did you discover it? That's too much for just config (.ini) files and stuff like that. Even Windows 10 isn't that big with a new installation (less than 15GB, I think).

Last hope, if you can call it that... are you SURE you found all the right locations, and that your music was deleted? Because you removed the drive before installing Linux, I think you can go the other way... remove your Linux hard drive, and get it to boot on Windows again. But there are other things to consider. You made changes to UEFI (BIOS) to get Linux to install, so trying the Windows disk alone still may not boot like I would hope. Worse yet, your UEFI could get confused and then not boot Linux either (without reinstalling). This whole idea is risky and I did not suggest it earlier because of that. You might have to restore some UEFI settings to make the WIndows drive come to life.

Only you can determine if it is worth the risk to try it. But the thought is that if you missed the files by browsing from Linux, that you might find them if you were running directly in Windows like you used to do. Or also, if your Home folders in Windows were encrypted, you may not be seeing it from Linux due to that, and maybe running Windows would access it again. These things are possible. I fear you will find the cost of professional data recovery too high for most of us, although businesses seem to have deep enough pockets for that.

The UEFI is a real pain these days. It may be too that you still have some settings that should be set differently. But the fact that you got Linux running is a good sign too. And the old saying, "If it ain't broke, don't fix it!" may apply here. For me, I install, delete, reinstall various Linux distros fairly regularly. And UEFI is a pain just about every time, because it is different on every computer. I know if it were me, I would try to boot Windows, but I cannot encourage you to do it.

What may be the biggest lesson here is: BACKUP IMPORTANT STUFF before tinkering with operating systems... back up especially to external hard drives, or DVD's, or flash drives, or even the cloud.

I hope you won't give up on Linux! Please keep us up to date on what you're doing, and if we can help.
 
takin a break from civ. did find all my folders, but nothing in them. and i did find my favorites folder that i had backed up there. no links, but document type files. clicked on one and couldn't open. what i don't understand is how there can be 150ish gb of junk. i remember when i started putting things on that drive, it was almost completely empty. oh well. and this was my backup. only connected it when i had stuff to add, or take a trip down memory lane. just hope i can get it all recovered. my daughter is going to flip out. most of it was vids and pics converted from film. not cheap. anyway, old dogs can learn new tricks.
 
I'm still at a loss why your data would be missing... and why a rather large amount of data is remaining. There isn't any way that I can think of that Linux could have caused that, not even if the drive were attached when you installed Linux. It would have been either totally erased or totally left alone unless you had done a custom partitioning, which I'm fairly sure you didn't, and the drive wasn't attached anyway so that is a non-issue.

You found all your folders, but they seem to be empty. That keeps bugging me. Neither Windows nor Linux would do a "random destruction" of data. I really want to think that the files are there, and that Linux is failing to see them. But I can't think of what mechanism might do that, except maybe encryption. The most simple and common encryption used with Windows is called Bit Locker, but I think it encrypts the whole drive, and you would have had to enter a password every time the computer booted, even before Windows started. (Let me know if that is the case!) Other programs can encrypt just files or folders, but I doubt you would have done that either.

If you want to investigate a little more, mount the Windows drive again, and browse to your folders. Right-click on a folder, then left-click to choose Properties for that folder. This will report how many files are inside and how much storage space they use in bytes, KB, MB, or GB. So it may report zero files, if empty. But if it says there are some number there, and if you double-click the folder to open it and see none, then that would be interesting. Also, while looking, right-click and look at Properties for other folders until you see where the the bulk of that 150GB of stuff is, and then look around inside and see what that might be.

If, by some strange case, you look at Properties and see a number of files, but double-clicking the folder doesn't show them.... try to right-click on the folder, choose Copy, then come back to your Mint desktop, and right-click on an empty spot and choose Paste. Of course the hope would be that you could then actually see the files after they're pasted into Linux.

And I'll keep looking for other things that might explain what's going on.

Cheers!
 
golfngeezer,
Is it possible that your files are hidden?:confused: I am thinking that "windows" may have changed them to hidden in error. It would not be the first time that a microsoft:eek: product did something VERY strange. Just a thought....

ciao for now,
Paul:):)
 

Members online


Top