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AeroClassics
Asked: 2022-07-07 10:17:04 +0800 CST

Clean Install of 22.04, Data Lost

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I did a fresh install of 22.04 today. I have two SSD's in my machine and the second one contains development files. I cannot find that data. Does 22.04, in a clean install, wipe the 2nd hard drive? Is it possible that the OS gave it a partition name or device name that I do not recognize?

system-installation

1 Answers

  1. Does 22.04, in a clean install, wipe the 2nd hard drive?

    If you marked the 2nd partition or disk to be formatted or pick an option that marks it to be formatted then yes. And generally that would be final too; recovery software get bad results when a disk gets written too as this removes all traces of the old files.

    I always pick "something else" when I reinstall. Did you do that too? If so, you must tell the system this disk/partition is to be included in this new system, assign a mount point, assign a filesystem and if it is the same as it was you can ignore the "format" option and it will be mounted where you files are available after you change the owner to your admin account. If you pick another filesystem that disk/partition will get nuked. Likely beyond recovery.

    Is it possible that the OS gave it a partition name or device name that I do not recognize?

    I will always get a device name but it does not mean it gets mounted on boot. The name needs to be manually inserted and you need to tell it what filesystem is used too otherwise the disk/partitions gets ignored. Commands like ...

    sudo fdisk -l 
sudo parted -l

    will show all partitions and their filesystems. If your 2nd disk/partition is there and not in sudo mount or df -H it probably is not included as part of your new system. Mount the device and it will show your data on the mountpoint you provide. If that is the case add the device to /etc/fstab and all will be well again.

    Where is the backup you made prior to doing this? If those are development files and you care about those files you really need to make regular backups. It can be fully automated so you only need to set it up. Takes a few minutes and things like this are no longer an issue. What if that data was erased by you making a bad choice? What then?

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