General :: Lost Windows Partition After Gparted Wiped Old One
Mar 21, 2011
I realise that this is not a pure Linux Q, but I am hoping for tolerance and even help!After removing the partitions (/,/home) that held an older Linux installation, gparted showed the original Windows XP partition followed by the new unallocated space. On rebooting, there was a Grub rescue error (text not noted, sorry). A live install running gparted shows a totally empty disk!
The removed OS was booted via Grub2 and I imagine that it is choking when there is no secondary(?) file to be found since it was vaped. I also imagine that this is a fairly straight-forward matter, something like replacing the MBR but I am so far from Windows these days that I am unsure how to progress with rescuing the partition. The machine has no floppy - that's how I would have initially booted it way back when. Is this something that I can do either through a Linux live distro or via a Windows CD?
I bought a new dell studio 1555 from best buy about a year and a half ago. Got the warranty because I have 4 kids and something is bound to be dropped, spilled or smashed at some point. True to my visions, something did get dropped smashed and spilled, and pennies got stuck in the dvd slot. So I took it in when the screen stopped coming on because of a loose connection in the hinge and they did apparently fix that problem, but also were benevolent enough to wipe out my entire hard drive, operating sytem and all, totally free of charge. I guess they figured since I like accidents so much, I would just LOVE having 18 months of data and programs disappear into thin air. I know all about how I should have backed it up, and I am not whining too much over this. I will roll with the punches. But there are just a FEW things on that hard drive I will really miss. Like a few crucial spreadsheets that I was not able to save to my external drive before the screen went south. Now that windows 7, I am not planning on missing at all. In fact I am loving running my new Ubuntu 11.04 from my usb and knowing that those idiots will not be able to screw this one up next time. But I would really like to be able to recover those files if I can. Is there any way to get those back? And I also cannot figure out how to find device manager. Do I have to install to hard drive to use that? I know these are all probably total newbie questions. But hey, i got here as soon as I could. Everybody has got to start somewhere.
I am having issues with Grub 2 after installing Debian 7.8.0.The computer is a HP Pavilion 500-307nb. I made the original harddrive /dev/sdb and inserted a Samsung Evo 840 as /dev/sda. From the original hard drive (/dev/sdb), I wiped the windows partition, but left all other partitions unchanged (in case I would ever want to recover the desktop to its original state). I replaced the wiped windows partition with a swap partition and an LVM partition.These are my hard drive partitions:
/dev/sda (Samsung Evo 840)
Number Start End Size File system Name Flags 1 1049kB 3146kB 2097kB primary bios_grub 2 3146kB 944MB 941MB ext4 boot 3 944MB 94.4GB 93.4GB host lvm 4 94.4GB 1000GB 906GB guests lvm
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The partition /dev/sda3 has 2 logical volumes with filesystem ext4 that I mount to / and /home.The partition /dev/sda2 is mounted to /boot..When I install like this, Debian installs fine, however Grub2 is not installed correctly.Debian installs grub-pc which seems not able to boot the gpt partition. So I boot the Debian CD in rescue mode and execute:
mount /dev/sda2 /boot aptitude purge grub-pc aptitude -y install grub-efi
After rebooting, I come in the grub rescue shell, which says: error: no such device: 986f2176--4a4b-4222-83b9-8636a034b3c7.
When I then enter in the grub rescue shell: set boot=(hd0,gpt2) set prefix=(hd0,gpt2)/grub insmod normal normal
Grub and Debian start up correctly.why can Grub not start up automatically correctly? Where does the UUID 986f2176--4a4b-4222-83b9-8636a034b3c7 come from? I have reinstalled Grub several times, I have reinstall Debian several times, I have even wiped all partitions from /dev/sda and recreated a new gpt table with parted and manually set the partitions in parted. Still on each reinstallation, Grub fails because it cannot find exactly the same UUID. Since this UUID is always the same, it must be stored somewhere, but it cannot be the partitions, I have wiped them and the partition table several times.
I did though a firmware update of the Samsung Evo 840 before reinstallation, could this be a cause?Also the problem is not in grub.cfg. Grub starts correctly if I enter the commands above in the grub rescue screen and the UUID value does not appear there.
I have a 230GB hard drive wich I don't know it's name.I have a 207GB windows vista partition and the rest of it is for linux (Ubuntu).Today I decided giving it all space to Ubuntu Linux ,but didn't want to lose all my data from the windows partition.I thought that by deleting all things except the folder with my data and leaving enough space to shrink and make enough room for another partition to put my data folder.The logic is that i could then format that partition wich previously was windows and use it all for ubuntu without losing data.After having ubuntu installed i could copy my data folder to /home and then delete the previous partition and make /home bigger.The problem is that after i freed the space,when using Gparted to shrink it says that the partition has bad sectors or the filesystem has problems and so it can't do some operations.
What could have went wrong?It told me to do chkdisk but as i deleted all the windows files and i can't boot into it anymore.I used the vista dvd to do that.I rebooted 2 times as it says and after that when trying again nothing changed.I tried to use ntfsresize with the --bad-sectors argument and also the -f argument but it's useless.At the end it says it won't do anything until the ntfs filesystem get repaired.Or it says it is too risky to continueIs there any way i could do some superforce command to resize it without losing data?Please don't tell me to put it on an external storage cause i have like 70GB of datas to save...no i don't have an external hardrive
I have 3 Ubuntu installations & a PCLINUXOS, plus Windows XP installed on one hard disk. I still can boot to each one of them and can mount each one using Ubuntu.
The problem "may" have occurred when I reduced the size of some linux partitions using gparted. I still have plenty of space in each of those partitions.
When I started gparted all of the HD was unallocated. I did that from each ubuntu installation and the PCLINUX installation, plus LIVECDs. All indicated the space was unallocated.
When I did an fdisk -l from a Puppy Linux LiveCD I got a normal start and ends of each partition.
When I tried it from Ubuntu installation or live cd, I received the following types of responses:
Code: ubuntu@ubuntu:~$ sudo fdisk -l /dev/sda5
Disk /dev/sda5: 28.5 GB, 28566397440 bytes 255 heads, 63 sectors/track, 3473 cylinders Units = cylinders of 16065 * 512 = 8225280 bytes Disk identifier: 0x00000000 Device Boot Start End Blocks Id System ubuntu@ubuntu:~$ sudo fdisk -u /dev/sda5
The number of cylinders for this disk is set to 3473.There is nothing wrong with that, but this is larger than 1024,and could in certain setups cause problems with:
1) software that runs at boot time (e.g., old versions of LILO) 2) booting and partitioning software from other OSs (e.g., DOS FDISK, OS/2 FDISK) Plus the Windows partition seems to go over its limits.
Since all of my OS installations are still working, I don't know how critical this is. From reading another post, I understand this might be able to be fixed by making some changes in fstab.
I was resizing my windows partition and accidently turned my computer off. When I went to run a disk check from gparted I get multiple filesystem errors. Chkdsk /r when run from a recovery cd says it can't determine the size of the partition so it can't continue. Is there anyway to get my files off the corrupted partition from within linux. Right now Gparted shows that it has been resized but that it is corrupted and i can't even attempt to mount it. There are only a few files I need to get off the partition but they are really important.
I was trying to remove my windows partition using the live CD. While Windows no longer works on my system, GParted shows that I still have 40 gb of unallocated space. Have I not properly occupied the space left after I removed the Windows partition.
I'm trying to add more memory to Ubuntu from my windows partition, but Gparted doesn't seem to recognize the windows partiton. I've done it before using the gparted live cd, so i don't know why it wont recognize the partition. Is there some way to mount it so I can move space around?
I am going back to Windows for good. All I need to know is what are the partitions settings so that it will be reconized able in windows. I planning on saving some of my songs and other media that I have collected but I dont want loss all of on some wasted space that isnt readable. So simply put what setting are needed to make a partition visible in windows 7 using gparted.
I've been trying to use GParted Live CD to shrink my Windows XP partition and allocate this space to /home.
On GParted I shrank my /dev/sda1 (Windows) from 36GB to 26 GB. Then I had 10 GB of unallocated space. I didn't know how I could use this unallocated space to increase the size of /dev/sda7 (/home). How do you do this?
10 yr old Dell laptop with NO WORKING DRIVES. i was dual booting xp and xubuntu when i decided it was time to cut the cord. so i installed gparted and deleted my windows partition. now it won't boot. my assumption is that i never installed grub. i got a usb to ide cable so i can access the hard drive from my desktop (xp home edition). i read that grub should be in a folder called "boot". i see on my hard drive that i have: "disks", "winboot" "install", "uninstall-wubi.exe", and "xubuntu.ico". if i expand the "disks" folder, there is a "boot" folder containing another folder called "grub", but the folder is empty. is this where i install it? am i an idiot and missing something stupid? where do i download grub if i need it?
So far I've been dual-booting Vista and Intrepid, and I decided I'd shrink down the Linux partition a bit, expand the Windows partition and reinstall Ubuntu fresh from a Live CD. I booted up from a Live CD, mounted the old Linux filesystem to check that I hadn't missed any documents to back up before I wiped the partition, and then cued up the relevant operations in GParted.
The key mistake I made was not to unmount the old Linux partition first, which led GParted to bug out and, apparently, stop my Windows partition from working. GParted no longer recognises the partition as NTFS - it tells me it's an unknown filesystem, and refuses to move or resize it.
sudo fdisk -l recognises the partition as HPFS/NTFS. Running chkdsk from a Vista recovery disk has been, so far, unsuccessful. What else can I do to either make the partition bootable again, or at least access it from Linux so I can pull my files off?
After I formated my windows partition using GParted it became Unallocated and moved under Extended partitions. I can't create the unallocated partition as primary one, or drag it out of the extended ones. I tried GParted live CD also, but nothing worked.
The following is a screenshot of GParted run on my system. There is a small unallocated space at the beginning of the list. This 1 MiB space is kind of annoying and I'd like to merge with any other partition except /dev/sda1, /dev/sda6 and /dev/sda4. When I right click on the unallocated partition, the only available operation is "New". And, if I click on "New", I get the following error message.
It is not possible to create more than 4 primary partitions
how to go about merging the small unallocated space with other partitions?
I have 3 partitions on my hdd right now, a Windows 7 one, the associated System Reserved and my Linux Mint partition. I was trying to use GParted to make another partition by splitting my Linux Mint one in two smaller partitions. I can't, however, unmount it, and so can't partitions it. I have considered partitioning it from Windows 7, but I'm afraid it will screw some things up and stop booting up correctly. So, what could be making the partition unable to unmount?
I tried to repartition my hard (320GB) drive yesterday because I need (40 GB) more space in windows, below I mention the previous file system and later file system architecture. It is dual boot (windows 7 and Fedora 13). I am sorry that I did not take screenshot!
1. boot partition, 100 MB 2. windows-7, around 75 GB 3. extended, around 230 GB
inside extended 3 logical partitions:
3a. 125 GB for backupv(NTFS) 3b. 4 GB for linux swap 3c. 100 GB for linux
I used gparted. Since I had to create more space in between windows and logical partition for increasing windows, (I could not shrink Linux as it comes to the end) so I removed Linux (I reinstalled later) first, moved (hold in the middle and drag) backup partition to the right by 40 GB, created a primary partition out of the left portion of logical partition and merged with windows. Finally installed Fedora on the right most portion (60 GB now) in the logical partition. Now my file system looks like following;
Now my problem is, I don't like that 7.84 MB unallocated space in the logical partition. I was told that it (smaller than the smallest chunk gparted can allocate to any partition) will always be there unless we allow some program to do the partitioning automatically rather than I manipulate/move it manually? It is true? If so is there (m)any software which can do this? Or simply how to get rid of this unallocated space.
I installed Ext2fsd from windows XP because I needed access to a text file on my ubuntu install. However, it didn't work because the drive is ext4 and all it listed was the root folders (/home, /var etc..) nothing any deeper.
I closed the app and continued working in windows.
Today I went to start my computer and it loaded the grub-rescue> prompt. I immediately tried to run "help" to find out what happened, however, grub reported the command as unknown.
I then ls and got a partial listing of the partitions.
Code: (hd0) (hd0,5) (hd0,1) (fd0)
So what do I do? How do I recover my linux partition? If the partition is bad - then how is the bios able to find the grub-rescue> prompt?
First of all, the boot device is an 16GB SD card. I install Citrix XenServer on it but I make the partition too small (XenServer makes a lot of logs file). I resize the partition but now it give "Illegal OpCode" and red screen everytime it boot.I already create the image of the whole SD card using dd and already try these process three times = restore the image, test that it can boot properly, then resize the partition using gparted, then it can't boot.
I already post this question in XenServer forum (with screenshot) but nobody answer there.The hardware itself is HP Proliant ML350 G6 with internal SD slot.
I am trying to create a partition using gparted for my centos installation but I accidentally deleted my partition table. my partition was created on windows7 and dual boot with ubuntu. I am trying to recover it using test disk with ubuntu live cd but after I recover it still I neither can't boot on windows or Ubuntu here is the result of patition quick seart
I was using gparted to resize my /var partition, which is supposed to be an ext4 partition, and during the beginning stages of the resize/move procedure I cancelled out of the process despite the warning this might be bad. The process was in the middle of the "read" stage so I figured nothing can go wrong during a read, but now I cannot access this partition mount wise. Is there anyway to repair this?
Unable to resize fedora 12 lvm parition with gparted. Need to resize to make room for ubuntu linux on same drive. When the fedora lvm parition is selected gparted says "No lvm support at this time". I am using gparted through the pmagic (partedmagic) linux boot disk. I have almost the lastest pmagic (5.7) there is a pmagic 5.8 on source forge.
i was using 10.10 and this disaster occured when i tried to install 11.04 replacing 10.10. i have a separate home partition, while installing 11.04 i chose one weird option called "encrypt home partition"i didnt chose to format the home partition but once the installation is over, i have all my data lost in home directory.Is ther any chance that i could get the 165 gb junk data or atleast some 200 mb of important data
A bad install of linux gave me a grub that won't go away. My only hope of restoring my Windows XP and retrieving the data that was backed up (most wasn't) is to somehow access the recovery partition. That's still there. The primary partition was wiped out. This is a remanufactured system: I -don't- have a Windows CD. I -don't- have fdisk. I -don't- have any of the utility disks I'd normally use (they're 300 miles away, buried in snow and ice right now).
I do have a disk and a thumb drive with the Windows boot files on it, but grub doesn't recognize these. If I could just get rid of that grub file, I think I could boot from either the thumb drive or the cd, or even the partition with the recovery files on it, but I can't get rid of grub. I think even if I could get fdisk on either a cd or thumb drive, grub would override it. Any one know how to kill that file WITHOUT fdisk and WITHOUT the Windows CD? I have live Linux disks, Ubuntu 8.10 and 10.10 have been the most promising, but still can't do this.
This machine has UBUNTU & wINDOWS XP. I'm currently logged into UBUNTU. I was just checking the features of GParted and accidentally clicked Device > Create Partition Table. A default MS-DOS partition table is created. Now if I re-start the Gparted there is nothing. Its showing entire disk as UNALLOCATED space.
Lucky thing is All the drives (C:, D:, E:) are currently mounted and I'm in UBUNTU. I guess its possible to re-create the partition table using current status. how to do this. This is a lab computer. If its not recoverable. I'm completely screwed!
I removed an ntfs partition I had in my HD and then resized my home partition with gparted to occupy all the available space. The resulting partition is supposed to be 129GB, and gparted/partition magic see that size. But the system does not, and all tools report the old partition size and the same free space I had before resizing.
This is my first time using Fedora. My previous experience is from Ubuntu. However I want to give a try for Fedora so I went ahead to install it on my new computer. Problem is that Fedora Installer (Live CD) wiped out my NTFS Partition. Causing my computer unable to recover Vista from factory DVD because it lost system partition as well. I want to know if this is my error or a bug in installer.
Original partition setup: 220 GB - Vista System Partition (NTFS) 14 GB - Recovery Partition (NTFS)
First I resized system partition under Windows Management in Vista: 170 GB - System 50 GB - Unallocated 14 GB - Recovery
Using GParted from Ubuntu 9.04 Live CD, moved recovery to the left: 170 GB - System 14 GB - Recovery 50 GB - Unallocated
Rebooted into Vista, make sure everything is fine. Then put in FC 11 Live CD, using custom layout setup in partition, intended partition layout is: 170 GB - System (NTFS) - Primary sda1 14 GB - Recovery (NTFS) - Primary sda2 200 MB - /boot (ext3) - Primary sda3 sda4 - Extended Partition 45.8 GB - / (ext4) - sda5 4 GB - swap - sda6
After I check my setup and pressed enter, it returned with unable to format /boot error: -1. Restart FC installer, it tells me that my hard drive needs to be re-initialized. I clicked no and reboot. BIOS tells me that no OS is found. Attempting to recover from factory DVD failed, telling me that system partition is gone. I want to know did I do something wrong or is this a bug in FC installer.
I installed Ubuntu 9.04 on my laptop last week. I had it dual-booted with Vista, but when it became apparent that I would be using Ubuntu much more than Vista from now on I wanted to resize my partitions. Originally, Vista was ~180 Gib with about 100 Gib of free space and Ubuntu was ~ 40 Gib with about 5 Gib of free space.So all in all there was ~105 Gib of free space on my system.When I tried to resize my partitions from the Ubuntu live CD, it bombed out after it had already resized the two main partitions. When I rebooted, Ubuntu loaded fine and Gparted now says that it is 120 Gib, which is right but there is still about 5 Gib of free space.The Vista partition only has ~28 Gib of free space, so now I only have ~33 Gib of free space
I was reading another thread about someone with a bad partition table and I decided to join this forum. I'm not going to take any drastic actions with the partition (/dev/sda3) in question. I am going to wait for instructions on what to do first. I am not very good with Linux and need some hand holding. System: DELL 4550 Dual-Booted with XP and Ubuntu. Works OK, just no swap. Well, here's what I did: I deleted a partition for Windows XP Pro because it was a trial, and it ran out. I then decided to slide the swap partition for the Ubuntu Linux that I dual-boot into over. (If this was successful, I was going to try expanding the root partition to take up the unused space.) I used Gparted on a CD to do this, as I figured it was safe to do.
I now cannot mount the swap space at bootup (and have to go into a backup version of the OS), although I can use Gparted in Linux to execute the "swapon" command, and it appears that it worked because I now see "swapoff" as an option on the context menu. (I actually don't even need a swap partition, except to hibernate.) If I highlight the swap partition and click on "Drive" on Gparted's menu bar and select "Create Partition Table", it will erase all data on /dev/sda, so how do I fix the bad partition table non-destructively?
I usually repartition a disk by backing up, deleting the partitions, formatting them and repartition. I just did a 200 gig backup (so i am safe) and i want to join 2 (ext3) partition together, sdb1 (data4) and sdb5 (data5) into one big partition. Is there a way to do it without scraping the data in sdb5 (data5). It would save me from rewriting the data back to that new partition (200 gig is time consuming).
