Ubuntu Installation :: Install Through "OEM/Recovery" Partition?
Jul 19, 2010
I'm sure someone can help me with this. I have a machine that refuses to boot from USB (including USB CD-Drive) and I have exhausted all other sane options to install Ubuntu on the box.o, my first (in)sane idea would be to create an install partition as an image file, containing all the files needed to install. I could then partition the drive, slap the install partition on the drive, put it back into the computer, and install from the actual system.
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Aug 9, 2011
I would like to build an oem style install partions that is bootable with menu to choose if I want to run install or boot already installed system. I would like to include current source packages on the same dive so if I don't have internet access at time of install, can can still install what I need.I know with Windows Vista and Windows 7, you can get this but how can I do this with Debian?
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Feb 20, 2011
Two days ago I repartitioned my laptop HD and added the latest Ubuntu (2.6.35-25-generic) to the existing Vista and existing Ubuntu (2.6.32-28-generic via upgrades from 9.14(?)). Prior to this install it was using Grub with menu.lst from the old/upgrade Ubuntu. After the install the boot menu labels the partition with Vista as the Windows Recovery partition and the recovery partition item is no longer present.
At first I wondered how I could get Vista to boot. I found that SuperGrub cd would boot it OK. Then, it dawned on me that the boot menu item was not the recovery partition, but instead the Vista OS partition mislabelled . Vista loads just fine from it. The recovery partition is no longer listed as it was with Grub/menu.lst. SuperGrub will not boot the recovery partition, showing an error "missing BOOTMGR".
'os-prober' produces--
root@Toshiba:/home/deh# os-prober
/dev/sda2:Windows Recovery Environment (loader):Windows:chain
/dev/sda7:Ubuntu 10.04.2 LTS (10.04):Ubuntu:linux
[code]...
I edited boot/grub/grub.cfg so the boot menu item is labelled correctly, but suspect that it will revert back when there is an upgrade.
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Aug 1, 2011
I tried installing Ubuntu 10.04 LTS on my girlfriend's lenovo using a live disc. First we tried it out to show her the wireless would work fine (her previous lenovo was not ubuntu friendly at all). She's interested in keeping her windows 7 partition along with the lenovo recovery partition, so I tried doing a dual boot install. I manually moved the cursors setting the disk space on each partition, and we allowed Ubuntu to do the rest. Much to my dismay, the installation failed.
I've done some reading over the internet, and I think in our case it would be best to use a Wubi installation. We're interested in using 10.04, so where can we find a wubi installer of Ubuntu 10.04?
Also, any ideas why the installation might have failed? The iso was downloaded off the ubuntu main site, and we burned it using infrarecorder.
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Apr 30, 2010
This morning, i want to install ubuntu 9.10 and want to upgrade to 10.04. Im using live CD and while install, i go to advance partition and resize the windows partition and after i resize the partition i saw my windows partition has lost.Here the details:Windows XP size: 80gb and free size 35gbi want to use my ubuntu size around 10gb, after i resize to 10gb and format etx4 as root my windows partition has gone. how to recovery and revert my windows partition back?
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Apr 13, 2011
I have got a Acer Aspire 9300 which came with one of Bill Gates unreliable operating systems and a recovery partition in case something goes wrong. I surely installed linux (now on opensuse 11.4) as quickly as possible. mounting this hidden recovery partition under linux? All I can see is this from "fdisk -l"printout:
Disk /dev/sda: 120.0 GB, 120034123776 bytes
255 heads, 63 sectors/track, 14593 cylinders, total 234441648 sectors
Units = sectors of 1 * 512 = 512 bytes
Sector size (logical/physical): 512 bytes / 512 bytes
I/O size (minimum/optimal): 512 bytes / 512 bytes
Disk identifier: 0x34fe34fd
[Code]....
I assume that the partition in question is between blocks 0 and 2047?
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Mar 7, 2010
I've two laptops, my main one is Dell inspiron 1545 and for experimental purposes, I use Acer Aspire 5315. I used to be a Redhat linux user from 2001 to 2003 on and off, but lost touch with linux for the past few years. I grew frustrated with windows after my Vista recovery partition in Acer Aspire got corrupted and when I took the laptop for servicing, the service person installed a pirated copy of XP. The laptop constantly overheated and I always received all kinds of warnings from microsoft about using pirated version. I finally decided to buy a new laptop and hence bought Dell inspiron 1545. Too bad I didn't realize I could have switched to linux.
I was suspicious about Windows 7 in my new dell right from the day one and thought of checking linux options available. I was surprised to know the the most popular linux distro now was no longer Redhat or Suse but a relatively newcomer Ubuntu. I installed Ubuntu 9.10 on a 40GB extended partition and was extremely satisfied with the ease of installation. The hardware detector told me I need to install "Broadcom STA" for my wireless card to work. I installed ATI driver from AMD website and it worked like a charm. Like any linux user, I couldn't resist the temptation to distro hop, so decided to use my old Acer laptop as testbed. The first distro I tried was KDE version of Fedora 12. The splash screen was very impressive and more graphical than Ubuntu's, however the boot time was painfully slow and I ran into a dependency hell while trying to upgrade using Kpackagekit.
I tried Linux mint KDE next and it was impressive, but I was still not completely satisfied. I then tried Opensuse 11.2 KDE and I immediately fell in love with the beautiful look and feel. I was so impressed that I went ahead and replaced the ubuntu in my dell with Opensuse 11.2. However, it was not smoothsailing when it came to hardware detection. After a lot of trials and tribulations, I managed to download Broadcom STA drivers and managed to get my wifi working. I realized that Radeon HD was installed as default and tried to turn on compositing. KDE got stuck and even after cold reboot, didn't recover. I had to re-install the OS and this time I tried to install ATI proprietary driver. But running the driver install script threw up lot of errors and I lost my mouse cursor. I had to re-install the OS again, generate RPM for the ATI driver and install it along with Kernel source, headers, gcc, make, etc... Finally I was able to activate compositing.
I then installed Xen and when I booted to Xen kernel, my mouse cursor again dissapeared, most likely due to non-compatibility of ATI driver. I had to uninstall Xen. I then tried to upgrade the kernel to 2.6.31-15 and again my mouse cursor dissapeared. I had to re-install the entire OS again. I'm so frightened of Kernel updates now. I never had such problems with Ubuntu kernel updates, maybe ATI is more pro-active in releasing new versions of drivers when it comes to Ubuntu.
In-spite of all my hardships, I'm so much in love with Opensuse and KDE. I love it so much that it now runs on both my Dell and Acer. I've removed all the other distros from my Acer. It has been quite a long time since I tried any other distro and I don't even have the faintest desire to distro-hop. Infact, for the past few days I'm so worried about the news of Novell takeover. I really don't want Opensuse to die. It will be a big loss for Linux users.
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Mar 16, 2010
I'm about to install Ubuntu Netbook Remix and my Acer machine has a recovery partition at the beginning of the drive. I've created the eRecovery discs but those will only restore XP - not the actual recovery partition (which I'd like to have in case I sell the laptop later etc).
How can I backup the actual recovery partition, and keep its boot file intact. Then how can I restore this partition at a later time?
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Sep 2, 2010
I have just bought a new computer and I want to partition it to be dual booting as I have done a few times in the past.
Currently (alternatively, see attached screenshot):
There are three partitions:
/dev/sda1: FAT16 DellUtility (takes very little space and is of no concern)
/dev/sda2: ntfs RECOVERY (takes up 17.58GB and is marked boot)
/dev/sda3: ntfs OS (the rest of the computer, on which windows is currently installed)
[Code].....
it is safe to delete the current boot partition. I am also not quite clear on when the recovery partition would be used and whether it is really all that necessary (18GB doing nothing seems like a lot to me). Should I make a system recovery media for windows before repartitioning? Also, I am not sure which type of ext partition to use. Finally, I am not sure how big to make the swap space. I think I recall the normal rule being twice the RAM (6GB RAM in my case), but 12GB swap space seems like a lot. Although I do sometimes run memory intensive programs (simulations for research). I normally use other computers for such simulations since they have far more RAM than my computer can possibly have even with a large swap space.
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Oct 18, 2010
I have an issue with my keyboard not being picked up in Ubuntu and I went to go ahead and boot into the factory recovery partition to start from scratch, but after it gives me a ramdisk loading bar, then goes to a black screen with a mouse like the recovery will start, then the computer just restarts. Now, I can boot into Ubuntu (but no keyboard) and boot into XP (as I am now) but I can't get the recovery partition to boot.My current station is out in timbuctu, so I am awaiting the arrival of a flash drive to load a LiveCD onto to use Gparted for any potential solutions.
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Feb 11, 2011
I was installing 10.10 x64 today. I wanted to manually partition the disks, since I have a /home partition from a 9.10 installation which I want to keep.Unfortunately, I selected to convert the ext3 /home partition to ext4 and didn't realise it was formatting the partition until it had just begun. In desperation, I pulled the power plug, but now I can't access the partition (using the LiveCD) - comes with an input/output error.What are some strategies to recover the data on the partly formatted partition? I don't think much, if any, was actually formatted.
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Aug 19, 2010
I'm having an issue installing Ubuntu with Windows 7 Home Premium 64-bit through Wubi. The Wubi installation works great and Ubuntu seems to install after the first reboot after selecting Ubuntu from Windows' boot menu, however whenever I select Ubuntu from Windows' boot menu after Ubuntu installs and it reboots for the second time, it loads the GRUB bootloader, however Ubuntu isn't listed at all.
Windows 7 is listed twice and Windows Vista is listed (seems it picks up the recovery partition for Windows 7 as Vista) and when I select the first Windows 7 from the GRUB bootloader, it just goes back to Windows' boot menu with Windows 7 and Ubuntu as the selections. If I select the second Windows 7 from the GRUB bootloader, it'll boot Windows 7 like normally. It looks like Ubuntu is nowhere to be found. Because of that, I just ended up uninstalling it.
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Nov 13, 2010
I'm thinking of buying an Acer Aspire D250 loaded with Win7 and then adding a version of Ubuntu.
The netbook will come with the Acer recovery facility to reinstall Win7 from a recovery partition in the event of OS failure. This means that the MBR and subsequent loaders need to be preserved for this function to remain (I don't have a Win7 disc and don't want to have to buy one).
I'm happy with a basic Win/Linux dual boot setup but I'd value any comments/suggestions as to how to preserve the recovery function when I add Ubuntu.
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Jan 8, 2009
I have a Lenovo thinkpad T400 with Vista x64 that I want to dual-boot with fedora 10. The T400's original config has 3 primary partions:
1) Vista boot partition (some weird partition that it only uses to boot... this is my first time using Vista so I don't know the details, but I think it has to be there and it has to be a separate partition from the "data" partition)
2) Vista data partition
3) Lenovo Rescue and Recovery partition (a separate bootable partition that is used for recovery, backups, ...)
My first attempt was to shrink the recovery partition and add a new extended partition that has the two standard fedora logical volumes and an extra NTFS to be shared between the OS's (I usually use FAT32 for this one, but NTFS support seems to be pretty solid now).
Everything was fine, but I couldn't boot into the rescue partition. According to this site:
[URL]
You *have* to have a linux boot partition be your primary partition. Other people have told me the same thing and that site has an explanation, but I don't get it =)
So, it seems that I need 5 primaries (3 original vista/lenovo primaries, 1 linux primaray to put the boot stuff into, and 1 extended for everything else) to make this work (which is not possible). Can anyone think of something else I could do (other than getting rid of Vista and the Lenovo stuff and giving them both the finger?) I'm thinking maybe I could make an extended partition and move one or more of the Vista/Lenovo partitions in there, but I'm not sure if they could boot.
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Feb 13, 2010
The problem is, on a machine, you can only have 4 primary partitions. sda1 and sda2 are my Vista and Recovery partitions respectively, which eliminates two of my primary partitions already. I myself have never used logical partitions, and was wondering if any of the partitions the Beginner's Guide recommends (/, swap, /var, and /home) could be made logical, and if I even need a swap partition.
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Mar 9, 2010
is it possible to use a Windows-based recovery partition on a dual-boot computer to overwrite the Ubuntu partition and remove the GRUB loader? For instance, if you booted up your computer, accessed the hidden recovery partition and used it to reset the computer to it's factory default settings, would that effectively remove the Ubuntu partition and the GRUB loader? Would a completely new installation of Windows overwrite/uninstall Ubuntu and GRUB automatically?
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Jan 28, 2011
My set up is a dual boot between windows 7 and ubuntu 10.04. This laptop used to have vista on it. See image below for my partition set up. pretty obvious where ubuntu should be.I accidentally selected the wrong entry in grub and booted into an acer windows recovery partition. despite exiting as soon as it loaded, the long story short is that it has goodbyed linux.On booting i now just get a grub rescue prompt.I have eventually managed to boot into a liveUSB (cd drive is botched too )As you can see from the screenpic, testdisk shows linux is still there but there are quite a few entries from the upgrades.So, if i can restore the partition around this linux partition will grub come back with it and will all be merry?
I havent mounted any volumes on the drive yet, but i think i need to back up my data before messing with the partition table. is it cool to mount them to pull some data off?general advice for how to proceed would be great.Im not too hung up on keeping the linux install itself. whats gunna be easier? install into that 16gb space and then re add windows to grub, or try and recover this partition?
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Dec 14, 2010
I recently purchased a dell inspiron N4010 with windows 7 preloaded...i want to install fedora into it and i want keep it as my primary operasting system.... but what worries me is that the windows setup files is stored in a hidden recovery partion.... So if i install fedora will i lose this ??? if no will i will be able to install windows from that partion?
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Jul 25, 2011
This is my first post on Ubuntu, ive been testing/and dual booted then reverted back to windows this past year, and now have gone back to school for computer networking...so im SUPER interested,So - i want to install Ubuntu on my little Toshiba netbook that i drag everywhere with me, but im afraid to screw with it's partitions. I dont want to spend $$$ to get a larger than 8GB flash drive to create a recovery from the HDD partition that is installed on their, and they dont come with the backup/recovery disks, so i want to either leave that partition alone (in case i need to switch it back to windows down the road to sell it), or whatever.
I know i could just download windows to my PC, transfer the files to a flash drive, and put it on that way, but the recovery comes complete with drivers, etc which makes it a smoother and faster process. Oh, i cant make the recovery of windows b/c i need 7.xx GB of space, and my biggest flash drive is an 8GB which doesnt quite make it.SOOOOO - IF i install Ubuntu, will that recovery partition DEFINITELY be left alone? Or is there an easy way someone could suggest copying that partition without a 16GB drive? OR is there any way to use an external hard drive to copy that recovery partition on to?
I have only installed ubuntu once, maybe twice, but didnt care about partitions and wiped everything as requested by the install. (i reverted back because i couldnt navigate quickly installing and updating programs, but now have a windows laptop and want to be forced to learn linux on my netbook).any help is MUCH appreciated! I have an Ubuntu scratch that im dying to itch, but dont want to lose my windows recovery
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Jan 29, 2010
I was copying a bunch of files between hard drives. For some reason I have permissions issues, but I was able to copy the data using cp in the terminal (I know I can sort out permissions, but that's something for another thread).So, I start copying files just fine, but cp doesn't have any sort of progress indication. So, I started up another two terminal windows, cd'd to the source and destination folders, and ls -l'd each to compare the folders.
At this point, I realised that I'd forgot to add -r to the cp command, so cancelled it. I decided it'd be better to start again and add -r in, and repeat the command. So, I went to the folder, went up a level, then rm -r'd the folder I was just in. It wasn't until I'd gone through with the command that I realised I was actually in the source folderSo, putting aside all the obvious things like 'You dope, you shouldn't have been messing around with rm -r, let alone sudo' and 'With great power comes great responsibility' and 'This never would have happened if you'd just sorted out your missions and usedNautilus', is there any way I can recover the data? I know it's possible in ext2, but not in ext3, but it's on an NTFS partition. Is it possible to recover files from this
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Aug 14, 2010
I'm using dd to clone a Windows Vista hard drive and recovery partition with zero luck. I duplicated the partitions with gparted then used dd to copy each partition and then the master boot record. Nothing............. no boot.
Code:
dd if=/dev/sdb1 of=/dev/sda1
Code:
dd if=/dev/sdb2 of=/dev/sda2
Code:
dd if=/dev/sdb of=/sda bs=512 count=1
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Aug 26, 2010
I was messing around with the windows 7 install and wiped a valuable partition on a drive, I ripped the sata cable out afterwards... is there a way to reconstruct the table?
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Jan 5, 2011
I have a dual boot setup with Windows 7 and Ubuntu. Lately Windows 7 has been causing me all kinds of grief and I decided that it would be better to just restore it back to factory settings. I have a Windows 7 recovery partition (hidden) that I can see from Ubuntu, however Grub2 does not detect it. It only has two identical Windows entries that take me into Windows (though in /boot/grub/grub.cfg they point to hd0,msdos1 and hd0,msdos2 respectively).
I have searched far and wide on the Internet on how to gain access to this recovery partition to no avail. I even found a link from Lenovo's website that details how to do this in the old version of Grub, though it doesn't work in Grub2.
Here are the most useful links that I have found thus far, both fall short unfortunately. [URL]
I have already backed up all my data, so I can nuke the whole disk if that's what it takes, but I don't actually have a Windows Recovery CD, only the hidden partition which I can't seem to boot into.
I also saw some posts where people were having trouble disabling the recovery partitions from appearing in the Grub menu, their answers often consisted of people telling them that it's not possible to disable the recovery partition from appearing without hiding the main Windows Install, oh the irony!
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Mar 7, 2011
As a big supporter of Ubuntu, after installing Ubuntu 10.10 on my mums laptop i decided to also install it on my sisters Acer Aspire one netbook.
The specific netbook had pre-installed Win7 starter. Everything went really smooth with the installation with ubuntu 10.10, Grub menu was also loading pretty well but when i chose to load on windows it loads the recovery partition of the hard drive.
The issue is that the netbook, like most netbooks and laptops, has a hidden partition which is used to recover Windows on the system. My Grub2 loader added this partition as an option to load windows with result me not be able to boot on windows ...well i do can load but it loads the recovery of windows.
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Jan 7, 2010
I have a brand new Lenovo Thinkpad T400. Lenovo claims that it should boot into recovery mode if the blue 'ThinkVantage' button is pressed during boot. However, this does not happen after I have installed Ubuntu (Koala). First of all, nothing happens when I press the blue button, and no recovery partition is visible in GRUB boot menu. However, the partition itself is still there. The question is how to boot from it?
I found some tips from [URL], however, they are for GRUB, but my Ubuntu comes with GRUB2. I tried to adapt their instructions to my case. I added this to /etc/grub.d/40_custom:
Code:
menuentry "Rescue and Recovery" {
insmod ntfs
set root=(hd0,3)
[Code].....
That, however results in message about bootmgr missing at startup.
One option would be to start Windows and reinstall Windows MBR, but this would nuke my GRUB, and things could quickly go downhill from there as I am using full disc encryption for my Ubuntu partitions.
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Jan 27, 2010
I erased my partition table. Can anyone recommend a good method of reconstructing it? And if this is impossible, can anyone recommend a good method of data recovery? I had an ntfs partition with windows 7 and a larger ext3 partition that ran Debian.
I'm running Test-disk on the SystemRescueCD at the moment (cross your fingers).
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Dec 26, 2010
On my Samsung netbook, I have successfully got a pretty speedy dual-boot of Windows 7 Starter and Ubuntu 10.10
I set up Burg, to well, replace Grub2 in favour of a more attractive interface and so far so good. I know that I can hide the older Ubuntu kernels/recovery slots by pressing the 'F'key. However, the Windows recovery partition still shows up. So it looks like this:
Ubuntu - Windows 7 - Windows Recovery (vista)
Basically, how can I hide the Windows Recovery partition? If I ever do need to use it, I can access it alternatively by pressing F4 at boot.
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Mar 4, 2011
I have an Asus eeePC 1001PX which I have installed Linux to. With a 160 GB hard drive, space is limited, which makes it a problem for me that Asus has chosen to place the 16 GB Windows Recovery partition (which I intend to keep in case of emergency or sale) in the middle of the disk, essentially preventing me from partitioning the disk to my liking with one partition taking up the entire drive (except the space used by the recovery partition. Is there any way to move the recovery partition to the beginning or to the end of the disk without breaking it?
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Jul 8, 2011
had a bad experience when Fedora 15 overwrote the ext4 partition of a data disk to MVL during the installation process.I cloned the HD and now I am working on it. However, my first attempt resulted in 900.00 number-renamed files into the lost+found folder. And that's not what I want: with this number of files I need to recover the directory structure and the files real names.I know this is a hard issue for being discussed in the forum and that I shall look for some expert help, but, I wished to useis bad moment as an opportunity of learning.
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Jun 27, 2010
While attempting to install FC12, Anaconda took it upon itself to overwrite the partition on my backup disk. Now I need to figure out if there's a way to get at least some of my data back. If there's a better place for this question, please let me know and I will happily move it. Using Linux since 1993, other Unixoid systems since 1986. I bought this machine back in 2004 or so. It was a pretty decent machine back then, but it's showing its age now: 370Mb of RAM, 2 hard disks with 80Gb and 120Gb (I don't think the other specs are relevant, but just let me know if I'm wrong). In a fit of insanity, I decided to install Gentoo on it. Don't get me wrong: I love certain things about Gentoo. But the constant fiddling that's required, while it can be fun at first, gets old kinda quick.
So various and sundry things have been going wrong with it here and there (CD-ROM, sound card, etc ad infinitum), and, finally, it wouldn't even load X any more (almost certainly some final Gentoo update which broke something) and I said "screw it, I'll just put Fedora on it." This is what I use at work, and plus I have a good friend who has far more patience with admin stuff than I do and Fedora is what he knows. So, last night, I pick up an FC12 CD that I have lying around and decide to finally just reinstall the whole thing. I went so far as to buy myself a Passport USB drive, 319Gb, and have been backing up up all my stuff very regularly to that drive. I go through one final cycle of backing up and verifying before I start the reinstall.
So my drive is solid, and contains everything I could possibly need (and probably quite a bit of stuff I don't). After booting into FC12, I used Palimpsest to explore the partitions on the existing hard disks. Not sure which was which, I mounted the Passport, where I have cleverly saved a copy of my fstab. Using this, I can see which of my partitions were /boot, /, /home, etc. Most of my personal data has been put into separate partitions so that I could reinstall without blowing away the data. I hope that I can do that there, but, if I can't, no matter: I have a backup. I find some bits of empty space and delete a few of the partitions and recreate them, consolidating the empty space. Still confident in my backup, of course.
So I run Anaconda. Nothing happens. Eventually, I figure out that it won't run the graphical interface because I don't have enough memory. I can use the text version, no biggie. It gets to the part about the disks. I tell it which hard disk to install itself onto. For some reason I think it's going to pop up and ask me about the existing partitions and whether I want to keep them or rewrite them (maybe that's a previous version of Anaconda? or a different installer altogether, who can remember). It does not. It babbles something at me about LVM (which I've personally never really used before), and then promptly locks up. Obviously standard Fedora on a low-RAM machine like this is doomed to failure.
I poke around on the Internet, and I eventually stumble on the Fedora "spins" and select FC13/LXDE. Hopefully this will have better luck. Reboot with the new CD, take a look at my hard disks. It has completely overwritten the old partitions, replacing them with LVM partitions. But not a big deal: I have a backup. Take a look at the Passport. Its ext2 filesys has also been replaced with an LVM partition. Proceed to beat head against wall. So, obviously what happened is, since I (foolishly) had the backup drive mounted at the time I ran Anaconda, it assumed I wanted it to take over that drive as well, and just formatted everything it could lay hands on as LVM. It certainly never asked me my opinion on the matter.
But, fine, I shouldn't have had it mounted. The question is, what do I do now? My first, panicked instinct, was to just set the partition type back to 83 (I believe LVM is 8E), which I did (using cfdisk). That might have made it worse; I dunno. But I'm pretty sure I haven't written anything else to the disk since then. I've tried testdisk (nothing useful; although it can seemingly find the underlying deleted partition, it won't actually do anything with it), and a bevvy of Windows Linux recovery programs (Stellar Phoenix, DiskInternals, Raise, and R-Linux), all of which were completely useless except for R-Linux, which scanned the disk for eight hours and was still going when I had to interrupt it (I may come back to that one, but so far it doesn't look too promising).
My primary problem is that I can't make an image of the disk because this little Passport is the biggest hard drive in the house. I would certainly feel better if I could image everything off it and then play with the image. But, of course, it doesn't matter that very little of that 319Gb was actually being used: I still need 319Gb worth of space to make an image. I ordered another (larger) Passport, which should be here Wed. Once I have that I believe I can do something like so:
Code:
dd ifs=/dev/sdX ofs=/mnt/bigpassport/smallpassport.img bs=512
Right? Then I can muck about with that image in some amount of safety.
Of course, I also have the original hard drives, which are not so large. testdisk can identify the original partitions on those too, but, again, won't actually do anything with them. If I could find something that would image just the partitions I care about, I could probably save those as well, but I don't have any other external hard drives with 120Gb of space free. Can I somehow take the info that testdisk is giving me about those original partitions and use dd to get only that part of the image? Are there other recovery tools I haven't considered? I have a Windows (Win7) laptop, a Linux laptop (FC10, I think), although its power cord is flaky so it's not too reliable, a smaller Mac, a really old Windows box (XP on it, I think), and this formerly-Linux box, which I can only boot off CD's at this point. There's nothing on this disk worth the 500 bux that professional data recovery would charge me, but it's worth a day or two of my life to try to get at least some of it back.
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