Lost Documents and Photos and desktop files and folders

[Matthew Flaschen]

Roger Benham wrote:
> Re: Lost Documents and Photos and desktop files and folders
> 
> Well I can only assume that I missed seeing the statement about
> losing all data if I'd proceeded as I would have not done so had I. 
> Expensive proposition to recover the data lost. I would that 8.10 had
> been handled as an update and not as an install. Surely that is what
> an .iso does?

Usually, no.  Unless you have your data on a separate /home partition
(as described at
http://ubuntu.wordpress.com/2006/01/29/move-home-to-its-own-partition/),
I would *not* recommend using a CD to update.

 Was there really an option to just update?

There may be, but I would not recommend it if you don't have backups.
The safest option is described at
http://www.ubuntu.com/getubuntu/upgrading#Network%20Upgrade%20for%20Ubuntu%20Desktops%20(Recommended)
 .

> Yes, I know, I should have backed up or much better saved it all on the
> other hard drive but I didn't ... because like I told a friend "the
> great thing about Ubuntu is you can't lose data when you update or it
> crashes". Wrong, wasn't I?

Even if Ubuntu were perfect (which it's not, no OS is), your drive could
physically fail.  Always use backups.  I use rdiff-backup
(http://www.nongnu.org/rdiff-backup/), which is included in Ubuntu
repositories but of course there are many options.

Matt Flaschen