HELP - Installed Ubuntu over Vista

Hello,

I had Vista as my main Operating System but since it was giving me problems i thought of installing Ubuntu as a dual boot option. I entered the burned CD and followed the instructions and after a few minutes Ubuntu was installed. Now i was thinking, "not bad OS, let me just fetch my files from Vista and then delete it for good" but to my surprise, Vista was no where to be found.

It seems like my Files which i needed where gone. But one thing which i found strange was that Ubuntu had a total space capacity of just 2.4 GB, where did the remaining 197GB get lost ? Was Vista really deleted for good?

I am not very tech savvy so please pardon me if i don't seem to know what i am talking about.

Anyway, out of this whole Mess i aim to achieve these goals.

1.) Get my files from Vista and save them on my external HD.
2.) Delete Vista & Format the whole C:/ Drive
3.) Install Ubuntu and allocate the whole new fresh drive to it.

If we for any reasons cannot get any files back from Vista then of course, it saddens me but nonetheless I would like to continue in that case with step 2 & 3.

Thanks for any helping hand offered.

Nick

Your first mistake was that you didn't partition the drive. You expected Ubuntu to do it for you. Your second mistake was that you didn't backup your files before you attempted the install. If it makes you feel any better, you're not the first to make that mistake. I came close to doing that once when I was trying to install FreeBSD 2.2.1 about 10 years ago. It's up to 7.0 which I've been running on a separate machine. It's always better to have a separate machine if possible.

There is a chance that the Vista files haven't been lost. If you create a boot disk, using the Ultimate Boot CD, Mad Boot or something similar, one of the boot options may allow you to see if your files are there.

An easier way or at least, I think it's easier, is to buy an External USB Hard Drive Enclosure, put the HD in it and connect it to another PC. If Windows can see it, it will give it a drive letter and you can copy your files to the second PC.

if your vista partition is intact, you should be able to see from your ubuntu partition. your ubuntu partition is that small because like the other guy said, you must have forgotten about partitioning your hard drive, you could have done that even from vista "rezise your drive then install uybuntu in the free space" f you would have done that ubuntu itself would be letting you boot to your vista partition through grub.
you might wanna get all the libraries to read and write to ntfs partitions. just open the packet manager and click on search and type ntfs, i recommend you get all the libraries and software related to ntfs, after that go to computer and see if you can see your vista partition.

if you cannot see it then use hiren's cd and use acronix, then see if you can see your drive there, if you do then just put your vista dvd in your drive and boot from it, then just click on restore system, and then click on the first option it will give it ""i forgot what it says, but it is to make vista bootable again. if it tells you it did not find any problems then choose the command prompt option and type
bootrec /fixmbr
bootrec /fixboot

if your vista partition is still in your drive that will let you boot from it. after you do that then just start from the beginning and rezise your vista partition, delete all the partitions that ubuntu created and reinstall it, ubuntu will install grub and so it will let you boot from ubuntu or windows, so you can keep both operatingn systems in your computer.

hope that helps, it;s been a while since the last time i posted something, but like i used to say ""use programs such norton ghost to create a image of your partition so that problems like the one youhave would not be so painful lol, you would have all your files in a safe place where you can always get them from. i have an image of every operating system i have install in my laptop: xp, xp 64, windows 2003, vista bussiness, vista ultimate, ubuntu and suse. of course i didn;t use ghost for ubuntu and suse just for windows and as you can see i really do some crazy things with my laptop,i installed all thsoe operating systems for fun and see which one perform better in my laptop, turns out windows 2003 did a better job lol, for even windows 64 didn;t help much

thank you