Help - deleted everything!

Now I'd be the first to admit that I have little IT "nous" but I've somehow managed to delete everything I had in the Zorin partition of my hard drive...and I mean everything - every file, every photograph, every bookmark - the lot.

I went onto update manager yesterday and it told me there was loads of stuff which needed updating so I just followed the instructions - the whole process took over an hour.

I was then left (on reboot) with about six different options of which to boot although I admit that there had been about four or five beforehand.

Once I found one which worked (!) I went to my home file and everything is missing.

Any possibility of help would be greatly appreciated as I'd like to get four years of photos, etc. back on my computer.

swarfendor437 wrote:Hi Baz P, will have to do a little research on this - sorry to learn of your issues. Did you make regular backups to external drive/DVD? Always a good idea to invest in backup solutions - and I am as guilty as anyone of not always following this advice!

Well I have two hard drives - one with Windows and Zorin on it and the other which I thought I'd backed up on. Unfortunately when I tried to use Deja Dup to restore I just get the message "No Backups to Restore".

swarfendor437 wrote:Hi Baz P - Deja Dup does not automatically save - you have to tell it where you want to save backups after first boot and set autoarchive up on weekly basis to your external drive - it needs to be told, then just 'set and forget'

Here is another rescue option to also try:

http://www.hiren.info/pages/bootcd

check out the section on Recovery Tools!

I would never be without Hiren's Boot CD on my flash drive!

I've had more than a stroke of luck.

I eventually found the files which I'd backed up with Deja Dup and have reinstated them all from 8th November 2012. It seems as though I've now got another copy of Zorin on sdb/5 which is the only one which seems to be working. I didn't even know that I'd set up sdb/5 let alone put Zorin on it but something has!

I've even managed to find some of my Opera addresses - well, quite a lot of them really - so I'm mpving inthe right direction.

The only snag is that I like to keep about 40 tabs open on Opera and I can't remember what they all were so I'll have to get the old grey matter in action.

It will probably take some time to get this version of Zorin looking the way with which I'm familiar but I'm well over half way there.

I've looked on the "old" Zorin part of the Hard Drive but cannot find any files at all which I've created (and used up until yesterday. Very Strange.

Thanks very much indeed for your help and I'm mightily relieved that I'd use the back up facility.

Cheers for now,

Baz