Questions About Deleting My Current Vista and Doing a Fresh Install

[YounGMessiah]

So your saying I just boot up the cd and I can delete the partitions from the cd?

[+BudMan MVC]

What he is saying that the process of installing windows will remove Grub for you -- but to get yourstuff backed up to a new partition that I would suggest you put on the end of your disk -- where the linux and 7GB part are.

So boot the vista media and fix the boot so that your using the vista bootloader again, and then create the partition where you want it.. Vista will not let you place the partition on the end without a little help -- ie create partition taking all the now unallocated space you will create when you delete the linux and 7gb part to use up all the space you want - the 20 or so GB part you want to use for a backup partition.. Then delete this temp partition and your new 20GB part will be at the end of the disk..

Then when your ready to reinstall vista and linux you can redo the parts on the disk how you want -- just leaving that 20gb part at the end where you files will be stored for backup, etc.

[YounGMessiah]

Alright thanks bro.. Just started the process and deleted the two partitions of Linux and fixed my bootrecord :).. Wish me luck!

[YounGMessiah]

I lost everything :(..

[+BudMan MVC]

And how did you do that? You were suppose to copy your files to the partition you created.

[YounGMessiah]

I did, but the Toshiba/Vista install disk erased everything..

[+BudMan MVC]

So your saying it gave you no warning that it was going erase existing partitions on the disk? I find that highly unlikely.

[YounGMessiah]

It did not give me a warning, I did this very carefully; oh well though not much I can do now, lesson learned..

[+BudMan MVC]

Yeah again I really doubt it gave no warning -- you sure it did not say something like that??

Restore the Original Default System Install - descrip says: "Restores all default software, drivers & settings. The hard disk is partitioned & formatted & the orig default preinstall is restored. ALL FILES WILL BE DELETED!"

Its been a while since I have played with a toshiba recovery disk - but every recovery disk I have ever used clearly stated something to the effect above if it was "intall" media.. The current ones shipping with dell pretty much just run the vista install - that allows you to pick the partition your going to install too. And even create/delete partitions during the process.

Yeah there is not much you can do about it now -- sometimes it possible to recover a partition even after creating new ones and formatting them... If you created the new partition at the end of the disk and copied your files there - they might still be recoverable. Something like testdisk can be used to recover partitions.

http://www.cgsecurity.org/wiki/TestDisk

TestDisk can

* Fix partition table, recover deleted partition

* Recover FAT32 boot sector from its backup

* Rebuild FAT12/FAT16/FAT32 boot sector

* Fix FAT tables

* Rebuild NTFS boot sector

* Recover NTFS boot sector from its backup

* Fix MFT using MFT mirror

* Locate ext2/ext3 Backup SuperBlock

* Undelete files from FAT, NTFS and ext2 filesystem

* Copy files from deleted FAT, NTFS and ext2/ext3 partitions.