partition table problem,

[musa-ktk]

Hi helpers :(,
I am facing a bizarre problem. I have installed standalone Ubuntu 11.10 on my PC, and was working fine until i decided to install Windows 2008 R2 for testing purpose alongside with Ubuntu.
Before installing Windows 2008, my partition table was something like this:

/dev/sda1 primary partition (40 GB mounted on /, on which Ubuntu lies)
/dev/sda5 (30 GB ext4 , mounted on /home)
/dev/sda6 (70 GB NTFS, mounted /media/general)
/dev/sda7 (75 GBNTFS, mounted /media/others)
/dev/sda8 (80 GBNTFS, mounted /media/videos)

I wanted to install Windows on /dev/sda7, but as it was not primary partition, i could not. so from windows interface i tried to delete it but it stuck there. so i just restarted the system.( which is causing me all this problem)

now when i start Ubuntu, screen goes black, and after a brief pause it prints KILLED on top left. (nothing else)
i selected recovery mode from GRUB menu, it loads some files then stops, saying kernel memroy error, no killable processes.

i booted form Flash drive with Ubuntu Live, here is the queer result of fdisk -l in terminal

Warning: omitting partitions after #60.
They will be deleted if you save this partition table.

Disk /dev/sda: 300.1 GB, 300069052416 bytes
255 heads, 63 sectors/track, 36481 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: 0xcf305bc4

Device Boot Start End Blocks Id System
/dev/sda1 * 1 3648 29295616 83 Linux
/dev/sda2 3648 36481 263735969+ f W95 Ext'd (LBA)
/dev/sda5 8288 17465 73722253+ 7 HPFS/NTFS
/dev/sda6 8288 17465 73722253+ 7 HPFS/NTFS
/dev/sda7 8288 17465 73722253+ 7 HPFS/NTFS
/dev/sda8 8288 17465 73722253+ 7 HPFS/NTFS
/dev/sda9 8288 17465 73722253+ 7 HPFS/NTFS
/dev/sda10 8288 17465 73722253+ 7 HPFS/NTFS
/dev/sda11 8288 17465 73722253+ 7 HPFS/NTFS
/dev/sda12 8288 17465 73722253+ 7 HPFS/NTFS
/dev/sda13 8288 17465 73722253+ 7 HPFS/NTFS
/dev/sda14 8288 17465 73722253+ 7 HPFS/NTFS
/dev/sda15 8288 17465 73722253+ 7 HPFS/NTFS
/dev/sda16 8288 17465 73722253+ 7 HPFS/NTFS
/dev/sda17 8288 17465 73722253+ 7 HPFS/NTFS
/dev/sda18 8288 17465 73722253+ 7 HPFS/NTFS
/dev/sda19 8288 17465 73722253+ 7 HPFS/NTFS
/dev/sda20 8288 17465 73722253+ 7 HPFS/NTFS
/dev/sda21 8288 17465 73722253+ 7 HPFS/NTFS
/dev/sda22 8288 17465 73722253+ 7 HPFS/NTFS
/dev/sda23 8288 17465 73722253+ 7 HPFS/NTFS
/dev/sda24 8288 17465 73722253+ 7 HPFS/NTFS
/dev/sda25 8288 17465 73722253+ 7 HPFS/NTFS
/dev/sda26 8288 17465 73722253+ 7 HPFS/NTFS
/dev/sda27 8288 17465 73722253+ 7 HPFS/NTFS
/dev/sda28 8288 17465 73722253+ 7 HPFS/NTFS
/dev/sda29 8288 17465 73722253+ 7 HPFS/NTFS
/dev/sda30 8288 17465 73722253+ 7 HPFS/NTFS
/dev/sda31 8288 17465 73722253+ 7 HPFS/NTFS
/dev/sda32 8288 17465 73722253+ 7 HPFS/NTFS
/dev/sda33 8288 17465 73722253+ 7 HPFS/NTFS
/dev/sda34 8288 17465 73722253+ 7 HPFS/NTFS
/dev/sda35 8288 17465 73722253+ 7 HPFS/NTFS
/dev/sda36 8288 17465 73722253+ 7 HPFS/NTFS
/dev/sda37 8288 17465 73722253+ 7 HPFS/NTFS
/dev/sda38 8288 17465 73722253+ 7 HPFS/NTFS
/dev/sda39 8288 17465 73722253+ 7 HPFS/NTFS
/dev/sda40 8288 17465 73722253+ 7 HPFS/NTFS
/dev/sda41 8288 17465 73722253+ 7 HPFS/NTFS
/dev/sda42 8288 17465 73722253+ 7 HPFS/NTFS
/dev/sda43 8288 17465 73722253+ 7 HPFS/NTFS
/dev/sda44 8288 17465 73722253+ 7 HPFS/NTFS
/dev/sda45 8288 17465 73722253+ 7 HPFS/NTFS
/dev/sda46 8288 17465 73722253+ 7 HPFS/NTFS
/dev/sda47 8288 17465 73722253+ 7 HPFS/NTFS
/dev/sda48 8288 17465 73722253+ 7 HPFS/NTFS
/dev/sda49 8288 17465 73722253+ 7 HPFS/NTFS
/dev/sda50 8288 17465 73722253+ 7 HPFS/NTFS
/dev/sda51 8288 17465 73722253+ 7 HPFS/NTFS
/dev/sda52 8288 17465 73722253+ 7 HPFS/NTFS
/dev/sda53 8288 17465 73722253+ 7 HPFS/NTFS
/dev/sda54 8288 17465 73722253+ 7 HPFS/NTFS
/dev/sda55 8288 17465 73722253+ 7 HPFS/NTFS
/dev/sda56 8288 17465 73722253+ 7 HPFS/NTFS
/dev/sda57 8288 17465 73722253+ 7 HPFS/NTFS
/dev/sda58 8288 17465 73722253+ 7 HPFS/NTFS
/dev/sda59 8288 17465 73722253+ 7 HPFS/NTFS
/dev/sda60 8288 17465 73722253+ 7 HPFS/NTFS


well, I have got no idea how they came into being, ostensibly they look like copies of each other having same data as i had on /dev/sda6 (/media/others)
and i cant find my data that resided on /dev/sda8 (/media/videos), i dont want to lose all the data i had on that partition, and I have no idea what to do next.

Help is required desperately.

[xyzzyman]

Well it seems you have more than 60 partitions. But from what's shown they all have the same start/stop which is why they are duplicates? Maybe gparted will show more than 60?

[musa-ktk]

Thanks for reply

well, gparted shows less actually,, it shows the correct no. of partitions that i had before,, but only /dev/sda5 seems to be functioning ,, others are marked as unallocated :(

It seems like the partition table is corrupted,, is there anyway to just fix the partition table? or i have to re-format every thing (which is last thing i would do).

or any other way to get back my data easily ( lets not talk about data recovery softwares).

[darkod]

From live mode you can scan the disk with Testdisk and see what partitions it finds. If it can recognize them correctly, you can write the partition table.
http://www.cgsecurity.org/wiki/TestDisk

And just for future reference, I don't understand the plan to delete sda7 to try and create primary in its place. If its physical location is really between sda6 and sda8 you can't create primary in the middle of your extended partition. Because that would split the extended and only one extended is allowed, not two.

[musa-ktk]

From live mode you can scan the disk with Testdisk and see what partitions it finds. If it can recognize them correctly, you can write the partition table.
http://www.cgsecurity.org/wiki/TestDisk

And just for future reference, I don't understand the plan to delete sda7 to try and create primary in its place. If its physical location is really between sda6 and sda8 you can't create primary in the middle of your extended partition. Because that would split the extended and only one extended is allowed, not two.
Thanks darkod, i found about Testdisk later when i decided to finally re-partition and run data recovery afterwards, which i did but could not recover most of it. Thanks anyway.

And yes, it was futile to delete extended partition at first, I guess i was just curious to see what happens(was not good experience at all).