During the setup of my server, I had to supply various information and edit various files. Now I want to do a reinstall using the settings I'm happy with.
When I configured my Linode512, I chose to only use 15G of the available 20G for the OS partition, and made the remaining space into a new partition (DataStore) which I intend to use for various backup files. Presently, I would like to store configuration files I've edited during my install.
I have 3 partitions on my linode, Ubuntu 10.04 LTS, Swap Drive, and DataStore. I would like to re-install Ubuntu fresh, but without destroying the DataStore partition I've created.

Is there a way of doing this?

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My VPS system:
(Ubuntu 14.04 LTS, Kernel 3.15.4-x86_64, Apache 2.4.7, MariaDB Server 5.5.40, MariaDB Client 5.5.41, PHP 5.5.9, ISPConfig 3.0.5.4p5, Webmin, PureFTP & Quota, phpMyAdmin, postfix, dovecot, amavis, clamav, spamassassin, awstats, fail2ban, Jailkit, bind9, vlogger, webalizer)

Yes, all you would want to do is click the 'Deploy a new Linux Distributon' link on the main page for the linode, of course after removing the old ubuntu image.

This will create a new image in the available space without removing any of the existing, and even allows you to resize the current ubuntu install to fit the new one in if needed.

@XReaper, thnx. That's rather easy.

Which opens up another question, would it be a good idea to have the OS partition, say 5G, and use the remaining space as a data partition were I would host sites from etc? So instead of using /var/www, it would be /mnt/partition_name/www.

Idea being that if I need to re-install the OS, the data isn't clobbered.

Cheers,
Nap

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My VPS system:
(Ubuntu 14.04 LTS, Kernel 3.15.4-x86_64, Apache 2.4.7, MariaDB Server 5.5.40, MariaDB Client 5.5.41, PHP 5.5.9, ISPConfig 3.0.5.4p5, Webmin, PureFTP & Quota, phpMyAdmin, postfix, dovecot, amavis, clamav, spamassassin, awstats, fail2ban, Jailkit, bind9, vlogger, webalizer)

more or less to answer my own question, after a bit of reading.
It's common practice to use partitions for /home , /tmp, /usr, and /var (and /var/mail for a mail server)
Using Ext3 is better for larger drives as Ext2 needs periodic integrity checks that can slow things.

_________________
My VPS system:
(Ubuntu 14.04 LTS, Kernel 3.15.4-x86_64, Apache 2.4.7, MariaDB Server 5.5.40, MariaDB Client 5.5.41, PHP 5.5.9, ISPConfig 3.0.5.4p5, Webmin, PureFTP & Quota, phpMyAdmin, postfix, dovecot, amavis, clamav, spamassassin, awstats, fail2ban, Jailkit, bind9, vlogger, webalizer)