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I have a problem, had tried to update from 10.04 to 12.04 via update manager but that seemed to not complete, then took me to the grub prompt when I tried to boot Ubuntu from HD, dual boot with Vista.

I need advice how to overcome the grub issue then decided to try 12.04 via live USB and can access the computer, and see my folders if not all my data.

I am just hoping the actual data is there, how can I find and back-up my data esp. that under 10.04 partition. Live USB does not seemingly give access to system admin eg Gparted, so assume I need to use terminal. I have tried sudo fdisk -l and see the disk data inc. dev/sda1 etc but none are labelled Linux or Ubuntu (or Windows for that matter), nothing I can obviously use there. I had a 20gb Ubuntu partition on the drive. I just wanted to backup my files and data, then do boot repair and/or install 12.04. Any suggestions?

Do I need to do a boot repair beforehand (did follow instructions but boot repair also advised to backup my data, but how do I find it and do so)? Or should I simply proceed to install 12.04 side by side with the 10.04 and Vista? Just worried about my data and also lost settings.

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You data should still be there. What you need to do is to figure out the UUIDs of the partitions (block devices), especially the 20GB one, once you know that, boot with Live CD and mount it mount -t fs_type /dev/sdaX /mnt/my_sweet_home and then you'll be able to backup your files (rsync -axHAX src dst recommended), also chroot and get a dump of installed package dpkg --get-selections > pkg.list. After that you can do a fresh install. – Terry Wang Feb 12 at 3:13
Thanks and sorry for delay, was overseas, how do I find out the UUIDs of the partitions? Am keen to follow your instructions. – John Mar 1 at 7:35
run blkid to get a list of UUIDs of your block devices. – Terry Wang Mar 3 at 2:53

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