Hello group, Let me give you the partitions and the way I have Installed Linux on my system I am using REDHAT 9 Linux While Installation I have made the partitions as shown below /dev/hda /dev/hda1 / ext3 /dev/hda4 Extended /dev/hda5 ext3 (Home) /dev/hda2 swap /dev/hda3 ext3 (Backup Data Partition) As of such when I booted the Linux last time I have found the following message Kernel Panic: No init found. Try passing init= option to kernel so I put the Installation CD1 and was trying to modify the init, then this was the message which pop out before detecting for Linux Installations Error mounting file system on hda1 : Invalid argument Error mounting file system on hda5 : Invalid argument Error mounting file system on hda3 : Invalid argument But it is showing the partitions as of before only The second method I tried is linux rescue in this case also I am getting same error messages as of above My 1st Question How to start Linux machine with out loosing data in my backup drive (i.e. /dev/hda3) The 2nd one is if suppose I Re-install in /dev/hda1 with out formatting any drive will my data can be retained ?? If not please send me the procedure to Get the backup data and start the linux Thanks in advance Suddavanda -- redhat-list mailing list unsubscribe mailto:redhat-list-request@xxxxxxxxxx?subjecthttps://www.redhat.com/mailman/listinfo/redhat-list