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[Tom <question76319@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

Question #76319 on Ubuntu changed:
https://answers.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+question/76319

    Status: Open => Answered

Tom proposed the following answer:
Can you copy those files onto your Windows side?  That would be the
normal way forwards.  I am a bit confused about exactly what has really
happened so i think a bit of background about a few things might help
...

Linux can usually read Windows stuff but Windows cannot see linux stuff
at all in most cases.  Hence in a dual-boot install it's a good idea to
limit Ubuntu's size to about 15Gb and then keep most of your data on
Windows partitions on the same drive (or on other partitions on other
drives).  Then both Windows and Ubuntu can read/write the same data.

Each hard-drive can have 4 primary partitions (or 3 primary and 1
"extended" partition) but must have at least 1 partition.  Each
partition can be used for just data or for 1 Operating System with some
data too, although there are more options in linux.

Typically Windows will take a complete hard-drive's space, give it just
1 partition filling the entire drive and then install onto that
partition.  Windows really can't cope with thinking about anything more
complex than that and tends to call a partition a "drive" which really
adds to everyone's confusion, especially when talking about 2 partitions
on 1 physical drive!

When installing or re-installing an Operating System onto a partition it
will usually need to reformat the partition and hence any data on that
partition will be destroyed, although sophisticated data-recovery
techniques can sometimes recover quite a lot of it although doing so
would probably destroy the newly installed OS (see much later in this
post).  Many people like to keep data safer by putting the data on a
different partition from the main OS but Windows is very limited in
dealing with this kind of setup.  Often when you buy a new machine from
a decent place that offers good customer service they will have 'split'
the drive into 2 partitions (still just 1 physical drive) and installed
Windows on the smaller partition and left the larger partition for data.
Windows programs tend to be quite huge as they don't share common
libraries and tend to rewrite everything rather than share anything and
it's difficult to guess how many programs someone might install into
Windows so it's difficult to guess how much space to give Windows but
the best answer is to give it 'quite a lot', especially since Windows
users tend to find it awkward to put their data on the other partition
(even if they have one).  So a place offering good customer support
would then find it really quite easy to shift the data over to the other
partition, reinstall Windows and shift the data back even if they were
called out to fix a "completely broken" machine on-site.

"Data Recovery" starts at the level of rescuing something from your
wastebin and increases in sophistication (and expense) gradually all the
way up to stuff like the Fbi and such-like might use.  Mostly when you
delete a file only the first character of the file gets changed and when
you wipe out the drives file-allocation-table (or equivalent) it's only
the 1st character of that getting changed that makes it completely
unreadable but if a new file gets saved on top of that "empty" space
then the table would be much more difficult to recover.

Most versions of linux, we call them distros, have a good way to demo them.  For example put the Ubuntu cd in the cd/dvd-drive and reboot the machine.  This should get you to a menu with "Try Ubuntu without making changes to this machine" as the default, top, option.  Choosing this should get you to a working desktop and we call this a "LiveCd session", if it works.  Mostly they don't have such a fancy title but it is usually the default option. Ubuntu's LiveCd should be able to pickup your internet connection and you should be able to surf using firefox.  Note that anything saved in the "Documents" on the LiveCd will be forgotten although you can use the "Places" menu to navigate to your hard-drives.  If you don't get to that menu then this guide should help
https://help.ubuntu.com/community/BootFromCD

When you get a LiveCd session working please go to the top taskbar and
click on

System  - Administration - Partition Editor

and let us know the text part of what it says, the useful information
will all be in the bottom of the 2 panes as we can't paste pictures into
here, sadly.  At the top right-hand corner is a button saying something
like "/dev/sda 160Gb media" and if you click on that it should show your
80Gb drive, selecting that will change the info in the bottom pane to
info about that other drive.  It would be great if you could paste the
info from that into here too.  Don't worry about Launchpad messing up
the spacings, we can usually work it out ;)  GPartEd is a somewhat
powerful tool so please take care to avoid doing anything with it,
certainly don't click "Apply", just quit out of it.

I hope this helps!
Good luck and regards from
Tom :)

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