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I have a 1TB hdd, which I have been using for 9 yrs and which had 10.10 maverick on it. the other day I booted it up and I was taken to the grub screen then into a initramfs screen...

I can't get into the OS anymore... I know that OS is outdated but I want to recover the data on there and put it on another HDD

What should I do?

Zanna
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Stevan Marriott
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    You don't need to boot an old unsupported OS to recover data from it. Get an Ubuntu Live DVD/USB instead, and backup the data. – mikewhatever Jan 14 '17 at 12:08

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You can't boot the Ubuntu installation that is currently installed on the hard drive, so you have three alternative ways of accessing the data on the hard drive. They are listed in descending order of speed.

  1. Install another Ubuntu OS as a dual boot on the same hard drive. Install TestDisk recovery application in the newly installed Ubuntu OS.
  2. Buy an inexpensive external hard drive enclosure and mount the old hard drive in it.
  3. Boot from an Ubuntu live USB, and install TestDisk on Ubuntu which is running from the USB as a live session.

TestDisk is a good software to use for recovering files. TestDisk is relatively fast and usually does a good job. If TestDisk can't recover all the files, there are other recovery applications described in How to recover deleted files? that work more slowly than TestDisk and may do a more thorough job of recovering files that can't be recovered by TestDisk.

karel
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  • Hi Karel, thank-you for the advice but unfortunately ... I had tried the live session and various forms of tools like gpart, system rescue but I can't just can't get seem to fix or be able have the other os read the 10:10 os!! – Stevan Marriott Jan 17 '17 at 22:30
  • Like I said that i am a total beginner with linux os and i would like to know the correct command protocols, please any help would be most helpful!! – Stevan Marriott Jan 17 '17 at 22:33
  • It could be that the hard drive is starting to fail. There is a very good tool in the default Ubuntu repositories for checking the health of hard drives called smartmontools. The smartmontools package contains two utility programs (smartctl and smartd) to control and monitor storage systems using the Self-Monitoring, Analysis and Reporting Technology System (S.M.A.R.T.) built into most modern ATA and SCSI hard disks. – karel Jan 18 '17 at 03:25
  • I have that tool installed i think but i just can't load up the os! The other thing, i have tried a live CD 16:04.1 on my new HDD. With the gpart... on the16:04.1 it read the other os and came out with Bios-grub fault ! How to rectify it？ without the net ？ – Stevan Marriott Jan 18 '17 at 23:54
  • The BIOS/GRUB fault points to a possible hardware problem with the hard drive. You can boot from the Ubuntu live USB as a live session and install smartmontools on that to investigate further. – karel Jan 19 '17 at 00:36