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After much, much trying to upgrade my computer from 16 to 18 on Ubuntu, I got it to boot off a USB stick.

The question now is: "If I follow the directions, will I lose all my prior work that is on my hard drive?"

I am far enough long in the process that I now get this option: upgrade/insall choices

Do I read this right?

  1. Option #1 (erase and reinstall) will destroy all of the files, of any sort, that are Ubuntu-specific on my hard drive when it does a fresh install; or

  2. Erase disk and install ubuntu certainly erases the disk as its approach?

It seems to hinge on the exact wording. It seems to me it says "all user documents, files, code, etc. gets wiped clean". But, for the first option, "it will delete all your Ubuntu 16.4 LTS programs, photos, music, and any other files" means it will erase ONLY those files that support the OS itself, no matter their type- but sll user files are preserved.

More simply, if I choose #1, are all of my Windows and Ubuntu user files preserved, and all that's cleared are files directly associated with Ubuntu, but nothing more?

eSurfsnake
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    Unless your /home is on a separate partition (and you would know if it was) either of the first two options will destroy all your data. – Organic Marble Aug 31 '20 at 22:42
  • I agree with the above comment. Use 'sudo update-manager' in 16.04 to upgrade the system. One reason for update-manager to fail is limited disk space on your system. In that case try to remove most of your apps you have installed and do the upgrade then. The upgrade is much faster and you have less packages to upgrade. so you need less disk space. You can reinstall the apps again afterwards. The local settings for these apps are stored in your /home anyway. – minimec Aug 31 '20 at 22:48
  • You can upgrade using the something-else without erasing user files, however if you format using any option (inc. something-else) all files will be lost. A something-else upgrade will erase system directories only, so server applications which may store conf files in those locations will still need some recovery, but desktop programs store data in $HOME so are safe. This is I think what you are after, but you didn't specifically ask about that. – guiverc Aug 31 '20 at 23:18

2 Answers2

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Erase Ubuntu 16.04.1 LTS and reinstall (the 1st option in the screenshot) erases everything on the Ubuntu partition(s) including documents, photos, music and any other files which are stored in the home directory.

Erase disk and install Ubuntu (the 2nd option) erases the entire disk including Windows if Windows is installed on that disk and any other files in all operating systems that are on that disk.

The Warning in red text in the screenshot alerts users that if they don't backup any files that will be erased before selecting either option #1 or option #2 then these files will be lost and it will no longer be possible to recover these files except with recovery software.

enter image description here

karel
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The suggestion to use sudo update-manager made it work well enough.

N0rbert
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eSurfsnake
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    16.04 supports Extended Security Maintenance (ESM) until April, 2024. See this answer. ESM is free for personal use on up to 3 machines. the suggestion to use sudo update-manager came from this comment. – karel Sep 01 '20 at 05:07