undo LVM?

[Herman Aalderink]

On Sun, 2010-05-02 at 11:16 +0800, Herman Aalderink wrote: 
> I have no access to my drives. I have to format all ?
> During install of 10.04 Alternate 64 I used LVM. The install was not completed.
>  Now all 3 drives (in 2 'logical volume groups') are gone.

Because the Ubunty 10.4LTS did not finish, I doubt I can get the LVM
system working. (I'll try, after trying RESCUE).
The problem might be limited to Grub.
Grub (I think Grub2) comes up with an error. 

To have email (to reach this list) I installed a new 10.04. I
reformatted 1 of the 3 harddisks (the HD is a separate logical
volumegroup under LVM)
Again Grub did not finish (because of the LVM drives, afaict). I use
'boot from 1st HD' to get 10.04 going. 

I used LVM to learn something new. Had no idea of it's implications.
(a simple 'Do not use LVM if you are not familiar with LVM' would have
prevented my problem.)
I had no idea of the implications. 

> I need the contents of my (old) HOME (that I marked 'do not format').
> I did identify the partition, but no access.

Windows XP is in there as well.
(this could well be final GoodBye to Windows ...)
Essentials had been backed up.
But I lost a lot of interesting notes, incl. all my recent Linux notes
gathered from this list. 

> Gparted reported:
>  Flags: lvm
> 
> Unable to detect filesystem! Possible reasons are:
>  -the filesystem is damaged.
>  -the filesystem is unknown to Gparted
>  -there is no filesystem (unformatted)

I tried Puppy Linux. I have no access.
(cannot read the LVM stuff I guess)

I will try some RESCUE CDs that I have.

It's frustrating. All the stuff is there in good order.
But I cannot get to it.

Herman in Philippines.