** On Sun, 3 Feb 2002 03:35:40 +0000 (UTC) anbalagan <anbu@sdf.lonestar.org>dashed off this message: **I'm going to lose all my updates , settings, latest netscape and opera . **and whatever I installed and whatever I stored , everything is going to **be totally lost................................ **All this is for simple "defrag" in windows???????????????????? ** **there should be someway to recover .....how?????? imediate backups when you make a change you're happy w/ . Another thing is , it helps to take notes or at least write down for yourself where the changes you made are loacted, so you neededn't spend all that time reading everything in the setup to loate teh one or two changes to each part of your sysem setup. I remember someone saying somethign about a program /file system/script something , that would let you see your linux files etc from Windows. So you might be able to save those updated rpms etc. that you downloaded. and maybe also grab the config files.. if you weren't able to rescue the linux partition you'd be able to copy in your config files. OR at least you could look at the default one ( after the reinstall ) and the one you rescued, adn you'd have something to go on as to what you had changed. Still , backing up to removeable media is probably your only way to cutr down on future work when windows hoses your partition again. You'll probably make lots of tweaks and dl lots of new stuff in linux, adn you'll get very good at getting a working system at least semi customised, equally quickly ... It happens to us all. Hopefully w/ decreasing regualarity. <G> -- j afterthought : People sweat so they won't catch fire when making love.