After having Ubuntu upgrade leave my netbook useless (I had to re-install), and - since this happened on the road when I really could have used my machine - I was determined (after doing a clean-install of Ubuntu 9.10) to have alternate boot options on my netbook.
At least I'd have a way to keep working.
I also wondered if any of the existing installs would properly manage the touchpad (that is, allow disabling while typing).
I decided to install a small image of the original windows, an Ubuntu and a Fedora.
I set about to create various test live-images on USB so I could test what worked well, and then work out the backup and installation sequence I would need.
I started from a Fedora boot on my desktop. Fedora images are created by Live USB Creator. I could create other test images from Fedora with UNetBootin.
I had been using UNetBootin for a while - it seems pretty nice, automatically downloading a distro (or taking a path), and being pretty smart about selecting the USB it would configure.
I worked back and forth between Live USB Creator and UNetBootin. At one point, I was testing a release candidate F12, and quickly used Live USB Creator (after using UNetBootin for the last several creations, including some USB ones).
Ach! Live USB Creator picked a disk with my home directories, and DELETED user areas before I realized what it was doing. VERY NASTY.
Beware!
2 comments:
The liveusb-creator will only delete the "LiveOS" and "syslinux" directories on your device (I just looked at the code) -- it shouldn't have touched any user data. If it did, then please file a ticket upstream: http://liveusb-creator.fedorahosted.org
Luke - I didn't act on this, since I was not in a position to try to reproduce the effect (nor did I know how to).
I wonder - given the Ubuntu upgrade problems (e.g. wrong partitions mounted), if this isn't some lower level problem lurking (i.e. close to the drive controllers).
- Yarko
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