I hope this is the correct forum, please forgive a newbie. Hi all, New to linux, ubuntu, and this forum. I have enjoyed ubuntu for the past few months, but after my last update installation ubuntu would boot to a black screen and blinking cursor. If I let it sit for a while it would give the following: 12.3456789 sd 6:0:0:0 [sdb] assuming drive cache: write through .............................asking for cache data failed It would then repeat the lines above but the numbers would get higher. It would never boot. I tried a live backtrack and knoppix usbs, and when trying to access my ubuntu files I get: THIS DIRECTORY HAS BEEN UNMOUNTED TO PROTECT YOUR DATA. From the graphical desktop, click on: "Access Your Private Data" or From the command line, run: ecryptfs-mount-private --- Running the above in a terminal gave me this:ERROR: Encrypted private directory is not setup properly I would ideally want to solve this problem and boot back into ubuntu, but if not, I really want to get my files off the hard drive so I can save them before I wipe and reinstall(yes, I should have backed up) I have tried to edit the grub with nomodeset and rmmod the ums_realtek, and a few other things I have found with google. None have worked so far. Any suggestions on how to get my files back or even fix this? Thanks a million from a newbie.