Manjaro install with replace partition option deleted my home folder

So, I had my partitions in order; separate partitions for /var /home /root and of course /boot
I installed manjaro using the replace partition option, which apparently worked fine. Now, for user, I chose the same user I had on the prior distro, so Im guessing, manjaro overwrote the home folder.
Is there a way to get it back?

In this case, you need to partition manually.

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I’ve already installed manjaro, and to my surprise (because this is not the first time I distro hop), this time my home folder, which was on a different partition, was overwritten.
My question is if there’s a way to get that data back or did manjaro new amazing feature of ‘replace partition’ just ■■■■■■ me over

“Replace Partition” is your first clue as to what has happened.

Well, replace means recreate everything?

Possible, yes. And if you have chosen ext4, then there is little hope to get the data back, since reformatting means also zeroing sectors, at least the static table on initialization.

This happened to me as well, once. I recommend Testdisk:

It helped me, I’m sure it’ll help you.

Edit:

Also have a look here:

https://www.system-rescue.org/

Just note: you’ll need quite a lot of free space…

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If you change partitions, make a backup beforehand
You can be 99% lucky, but what to do when 1% hits?

Some say no backup → no pity

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So, it seems no one is understanding the problem.
/root and /home are different partitions. the replaced partition was /root, as I’ve done dozens of times when distro hoping, keeping my /home partition untouched.
This time, it appears that manjaro, in all its glory, decided that if I named the user the same as the previous user, then it would go and rewrite the home/[username] folder in the /home partition.

serves me right for choosing this excuse of a distro just to save a couple of hours from installing and configuring arch

That was totally uncallled for. Everybody’s just trying to help. What’s more, I highly doubt this is Manjaro, or the installer’s fault, because you are the first person that I’ve seen with this issue.

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I mean no insult to the people here. But from more than 10 different distros, and more than 50 hops, only with manjaro has this happened.

Well, it was.

Also, since you’ve used many a distro before, I would have thought you learned to double-check thing before doing something that could be dangerous. You specified replace, which generally mean something should be destroyed and, well, replaced. So I’d say it’s, indeed, a dangerous operation.

But check the Testdisk link I gave you. it might just help you.

(When this happened to me, I didn’t go around insulting Manjaro.)

my apologies if I offended you.
Yes, but then again, the replaced partition wasn’t the issue, that’s my point. It erased data on a partition that wasn’t replaced.
And yes, the first thing after I realized this happened was to start looking for a file recovery program, and found photorec (part of testdisk pkg).
Im currently sorting through a sea of unnamed files.

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It’s not me you should apologize to. It’s the creators of this wonderful distribution. I’m but a lowly user.

First of all, installing without backing up your data is just foolish. Also, keeping a /home partition intact from a previous installation can also be problematic. Your data should not be on a partition the OS uses. I keep a /data partition and just mount it and link to /home. The /home partition should only be for config files and such and by keeping a previous /home will screw things up for the new OS. Especially if it’s a different OS. Many Linux distributions do things a bit differently and can get confused with the wrong config files.

Are you stating this simply from the difference of content in /home/<user> ? Or because that partition’s content did got replaced?
Just checking.


Mount configuration:

cat /etc/fstab


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Back in time - I used this approach lot’s of times - also with Manjaro - I have had that accident - in fact I don’t quite understand what you mean by replace partition?

But you need to select custom partition or manual - can’t remember the naming schema - the replace partition only works for the root partition - and only within the automatic partitioning - the first page when selecting destination.

Then you

  • manually assign the partitioins in the Calamares partition manager
  • watch out for the format flag
  • you usually want to set the flag for /root but not for the partition mounted as /home