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I live on a small island in Scotland. I wouldn't consider myself particularly savvy with computers, but in these parts it seems I am comparatively. I'm trying to help an elderly neighbor recover their computer; it seems a recent Ubuntu update failed, and now he's stuck with the HP logo endlessly when it boots.

To me it seemed like a failed update. I backed up his hard drive as an ISO, by booting Ubuntu from an external and using the disk manager* to copy a disk image from the main drive.

I then (re)installed Ubuntu using the option to preserve files. I shrunk the original partition as much as it would allow, as he won't be using that OS partition now. This did work, it boots fine now.

The files aren't here though. They're either on a different partition, or gone as perhaps I shrunk the original partition too much.

Everything is backed up though as an ISO. Does anyone know how I can restore his personal files from an image?

Dwight E
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2 Answers2

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I am assuming you backed up the root directory in the iso.

Double click the iso which should allow you to browse the contents, and if that does not work follow this. Then you can access the home folder under /home/user_name inside the iso.

It is a good idea not to copy and paste the whole old home folder (along with the old configuration files) into your new installation's home. Instead, you can copy the directories Documents, Downloads, Pictures one by one, and any other necessary folder/files.

Archisman Panigrahi
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You can mount an ISO file into the file system either by clicking or follow the example from https://askubuntu.com/a/164232/124466 as I quote below as well for clarity (This method is also called "loop mount"):

Maybe, instead of installing additional software, you can use what the system has to this end:

Create a directory to serve as the mount location:

sudo mkdir /media/iso

Mount the ISO in the target directory:

sudo mount -o loop path/to/iso/file/YOUR_ISO_FILE.ISO /media/iso

Now is the files in the ISO available in the directory /media/iso

Unmount the ISO:

sudo umount /media/iso
Mats Karlsson
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