Installation overwrote windows installation too easily

[Nils Kassube]

Karl Larsen wrote:
> Alan E. Davis wrote:
> > One user called me after trying to install on his desktop.  He was
> > struck by about four power outages during the process, and as it
> > turns out, Ubuntu installed all over the entire (SATA) disk.  Only
> > one hdd is on his machine.  There is not trace of Windows left on the
> > machine. The experience of many others was that despite their worst
> > fears, they were left with the capability of booting either Ubuntu or
> > Windows, at boot time, and they were pleased that Windows was still
> > the default.
> >
> > For my friend, however, this wasn't the case.  FIrst of all, he asks,
> > is there such a software engineer who can recover the windows data
> > after a formatting with ext3?

No. If the disk is formatted you have to rely on your backups. There is no 
other chance to recover. Except maybe for those three letter agencies 
with a big budget.

> > And second of all, I think I would like to reiterate my comment, some
> > months ago, that Ubuntu's installer makes it too easy to overwrite
> > all the partitions.  I would suggest (without being a programmer
> > myself) that it would be fairly easy to set up the installer with
> > simpler messages, and require more verifications before actually
> > doing the partitioning---especialy when selecting to use the entire
> > disk.  It should, in fact, be almost impossible to overwrite the
> > entire disk unless one really tried.  My friend said, after an 85%
> > install, the reboot saw the system just install itself.  I'm not sure
> > what he meant, but I think the upshot is that while he was given an
> > option at one point to install beside windows, the installer finally
> > overwrote the disk.
>
>     If you have software that can make a new partition on a hard drive,
> it can ruin your entire hard drive. The problem is Windows. 

No, it isn't.

> If you load 
> Windows on a large hard drive it will make one large partition using
> the entire hard drive.

Ubuntu isn't different - unless you know something about partitions and 
use manual partitioning. If you don't plan to use a second OS you want 
your OS to use the entire disk, no matter what disk size you have.

But you are missing the point. The user unintentionally selected to use 
the entire disk instead of resizing the Windows partition. 

> Then if you want to load something else you must 
> take it from Windows which throws files all over the hard drive. Your
> going to get something ruined if you take some space but maybe not too
> much. It helps to Defrag just prior to loading Ubuntu. I hope they did
> that.

Yes, sometimes it might help but I'm not confident about that. However if 
you have Vista it is even better to use the partitioning tool coming with 
Vista to resize the Windows partition.


Nils