Messed up drive during Marverik installation, HELP

[biltong]

Hi everyone,

I just did a new upgrade to Maverik, however I accidentally messed up my second hard drive in the process. I have read up on data recovery stuff and there are tons of tool... but I need to know what happened, then I can worry about the fixing.

Ok, Standard P4 PC with two HDDs.
1 X 120GB for / & /Home
1 X 350GB for /Data

During the install I told the setup my second HDD is /Home (who knows why?? -stupid I know) and that its EXT4. (no format)

Now I have a lovely clean HDD with /home. :-P

What happened here now??... There were no partition changes made, I did not format the drive. AND most importantly... how do I fix it????

PLEASE ANYONE?!?!

[lmarmisa]

Boot your system into a Ubuntu Live CD, open a terminal, type this command and post its output:



sudo fdisk -l

[wet-willy]

What format did the drive have originally...and what is it now? /etc/fstab will tell.
If all the data is gone as you mention it's a nice clean drive, means it got formatted. If so, your only avenue for data recovery is with a data carver.

[Rubi1200]

As long as you have not attempted to write anything to the drive, there is a chance for data recovery using Testdisk.
http://www.cgsecurity.org/wiki/TestDisk_Step_By_Step

[biltong]

Hi all,

Here are the details of the two disks in use. sdb is the problem child.
I upgraded from Koala... which I think still had EXT3.. so in this case I guess the file system changed to EXT4.

To lmarmisa: (output from fdisk -l)

fdisk -l

Disk /dev/sda: 122.9 GB, 122942324736 bytes
255 heads, 63 sectors/track, 14946 cylinders
Units = cylinders of 16065 * 512 = 8225280 bytes
Sector size (logical/physical): 512 bytes / 512 bytes
I/O size (minimum/optimal): 512 bytes / 512 bytes
Disk identifier: 0x0005b746

Device Boot Start End Blocks Id System
/dev/sda1 * 1 14374 115453952 83 Linux
/dev/sda2 14374 14947 4603905 5 Extended
/dev/sda5 14374 14947 4603904 82 Linux swap / Solaris

Disk /dev/sdb: 300.1 GB, 300090728448 bytes
255 heads, 63 sectors/track, 36483 cylinders
Units = cylinders of 16065 * 512 = 8225280 bytes
Sector size (logical/physical): 512 bytes / 512 bytes
I/O size (minimum/optimal): 512 bytes / 512 bytes
Disk identifier: 0x9bb7eb84

Device Boot Start End Blocks Id System
/dev/sdb1 1 36483 293049666 f W95 Ext'd (LBA)
/dev/sdb5 1 29797 239344339+ 83 Linux
/dev/sdb6 29798 36483 53705263+ c W95 FAT32 (LBA)


To wet-willy: (output /etc/fstab)

# /etc/fstab: static file system information.
#
# Use 'blkid -o value -s UUID' to print the universally unique identifier
# for a device; this may be used with UUID= as a more robust way to name
# devices that works even if disks are added and removed. See fstab(5).
#
# <file system> <mount point> <type> <options> <dump> <pass>
proc /proc proc nodev,noexec,nosuid 0 0
# / was on /dev/sda1 during installation
UUID=a9a3c9ed-9e82-4954-9ad0-354c5ed1504b / ext4 errors=remount-ro 0 1
# swap was on /dev/sda5 during installation
UUID=c5192983-1b40-45f2-a3f6-69409bc9f23b none swap sw 0 0


Thanks for the responses.

[wet-willy]

I find it odd that /dev/sdb is not mounted according to /etc/fstab. Home must be part of / on /dev/sda. And there is a smaller Fat partition at the end of the drive, have you tried mounting it to see what's in there? It should be visible to Windows also.

[biltong]

I find it odd that /dev/sdb is not mounted according to /etc/fstab. Home must be part of / on /dev/sda. And there is a smaller Fat partition at the end of the drive, have you tried mounting it to see what's in there? It should be visible to Windows also.

Actually once I realised my mistake, I re-installed the PC using the option "Entire disk" on sda....without mounts to sdb. So now the fstab does not have any info on sdb.

[lmarmisa]

Actually once I realised my mistake, I re-installed the PC using the option "Entire disk" on sda....without mounts to sdb. So now the fstab does not have any info on sdb.

You wish to fix the partition. But, what is your purpose?. Do you want to try to recover the lost files?. This could be very difficult. Or simply do you wish to create a NTFS partition in /dev/sdb5?. This is not difficult.

[biltong]

You wish to fix the partition. But, what is your purpose?. Do you want to try to recover the lost files?. This could be very difficult. Or simply do you wish to create a NTFS partition in /dev/sdb5?. This is not difficult.

As mentioned before, I did not create any new partitions nor did I format the drive on sdb. However I think that I changed the file system from EXT3 to EXT4 which caused the data to disappear.

How I have to figure out how to get my data back. Will changing the file system from EXT4 to EXT3 "restore" my data? or do I need to start digging deeper with tools like photorec or data carver?

[oldfred]

Was all you data in one partition. Testdisk my recover partitions, if not then you have to use photorec to recover files.

https://help.ubuntu.com/community/DataRecovery
http://www.cgsecurity.org/wiki/TestDisk
repairs including testdisk info & links
http://members.iinet.net.au/~herman546/p21.html
https://help.ubuntu.com/community/DataRecovery#Lost%20Partition

Instructions
http://www.cgsecurity.org/wiki/TestDisk_Step_By_Step
http://www.cgsecurity.org/wiki/Menu_Analyse

Testdisk & photorec
http://www.psychocats.net/ubuntucat/recoverdeletedfiles/
http://www.linux.com/archive/feed/56588
http://lglinux.blogspot.com/2008/10/use-flac-tags-to-rename-files.html

[biltong]

Was all you data in one partition. Testdisk my recover partitions, if not then you have to use photorec to recover files.

https://help.ubuntu.com/community/DataRecovery
http://www.cgsecurity.org/wiki/TestDisk
repairs including testdisk info & links
http://members.iinet.net.au/~herman546/p21.html
https://help.ubuntu.com/community/DataRecovery#Lost%20Partition

Instructions
http://www.cgsecurity.org/wiki/TestDisk_Step_By_Step
http://www.cgsecurity.org/wiki/Menu_Analyse

Testdisk & photorec
http://www.psychocats.net/ubuntucat/recoverdeletedfiles/
http://www.linux.com/archive/feed/56588
http://lglinux.blogspot.com/2008/10/use-flac-tags-to-rename-files.html

Oh boy, looks like I've hot no other option but to do data recovery :-(