ventisca
August 22nd, 2013, 08:28 AM
Long story short: I overwrote my hard drive partitions with a Linux installation. I know, you heard the joke before... But if you want to read the gory details (and a warning) read the PS.
My drive had several partitions, including windows 8, efi, Linux, a recovery partition and a data partition to use with both Linux and windows. You have all the details in http://paste.ubuntu.com/6004976/
I would be a happy man again if I could get back these last two, but hey beggars can't be choosers. I am right now cloning the drive to another bigger drive... And now my questions start:
1) Ubuntu did a few partitions in the drive while installing. The biggest one takes most of the drive and is ext4. It is basically unused, because I aborted the installation as soon as I noticed my error. My question is... When Ubuntu formatted the disk, did it fill it with zeroes or was it just a "quick format"... Meaning that probably my data is still there waiting to be rescued.
2) As I know the exact location of my old partitions, I tried testdisk to first try and retrieve the old partitions, which gave me a big nothing. Then, I used testdisk to manually write the partitions as they were and with the same file type... To no avail as well. Gparted does not recognise the partitions (it says unknown) and there is no way to read them, that I am aware of. My question is why? I mean, I want to understand how the formatting/partition table works. If the data is still there in the sectors, writing the info of the partition tables shouldn't it reveal it? Maybe the format to another file type does something else that I am unaware of?
Well, any other tips would be welcomed, but at least I want to get something useful from this... And maybe learning how the data structure in the hard drive is written will help me in the future.
Thanks a lot!
PS: The story... In the beginning there was a Toshiba ultrabook with Windows only. As the owner thought that he would be lonely, the owner read a thousand pages of internet and installed Ubuntu and a Data partition. The owner looked at the partition table and said it is good. And the owner was happy. As it was Sunday and the owner was lazy he did not do an image of the disk. One day, the owner decided to make a live USB with Ubuntu. The owner must had been drunk, because he confused the USB stick sdb with one of the partitions of the hard drive sda7. Then, the root partition of Linux was erased and the owner was unhappy. The owner reinstalled the root partition, leaving the home folder as it was, but Ubuntu decided not to follow this and created another home folder inside the home folder. The owner was unhappy and decided to reinstall Ubuntu completely... And clicked on erase Ubuntu 13.04 and replace it with Ubuntu 13.04, instead of a manual install... And all hell broke loose. Warning: the installation of Ubuntu may not recognise the other folders in the hard drive and thinks everything there is Ubuntu and thus erasable
PPS: I am new to this place... Feel free to let me know how many rules I have broken.
My drive had several partitions, including windows 8, efi, Linux, a recovery partition and a data partition to use with both Linux and windows. You have all the details in http://paste.ubuntu.com/6004976/
I would be a happy man again if I could get back these last two, but hey beggars can't be choosers. I am right now cloning the drive to another bigger drive... And now my questions start:
1) Ubuntu did a few partitions in the drive while installing. The biggest one takes most of the drive and is ext4. It is basically unused, because I aborted the installation as soon as I noticed my error. My question is... When Ubuntu formatted the disk, did it fill it with zeroes or was it just a "quick format"... Meaning that probably my data is still there waiting to be rescued.
2) As I know the exact location of my old partitions, I tried testdisk to first try and retrieve the old partitions, which gave me a big nothing. Then, I used testdisk to manually write the partitions as they were and with the same file type... To no avail as well. Gparted does not recognise the partitions (it says unknown) and there is no way to read them, that I am aware of. My question is why? I mean, I want to understand how the formatting/partition table works. If the data is still there in the sectors, writing the info of the partition tables shouldn't it reveal it? Maybe the format to another file type does something else that I am unaware of?
Well, any other tips would be welcomed, but at least I want to get something useful from this... And maybe learning how the data structure in the hard drive is written will help me in the future.
Thanks a lot!
PS: The story... In the beginning there was a Toshiba ultrabook with Windows only. As the owner thought that he would be lonely, the owner read a thousand pages of internet and installed Ubuntu and a Data partition. The owner looked at the partition table and said it is good. And the owner was happy. As it was Sunday and the owner was lazy he did not do an image of the disk. One day, the owner decided to make a live USB with Ubuntu. The owner must had been drunk, because he confused the USB stick sdb with one of the partitions of the hard drive sda7. Then, the root partition of Linux was erased and the owner was unhappy. The owner reinstalled the root partition, leaving the home folder as it was, but Ubuntu decided not to follow this and created another home folder inside the home folder. The owner was unhappy and decided to reinstall Ubuntu completely... And clicked on erase Ubuntu 13.04 and replace it with Ubuntu 13.04, instead of a manual install... And all hell broke loose. Warning: the installation of Ubuntu may not recognise the other folders in the hard drive and thinks everything there is Ubuntu and thus erasable
PPS: I am new to this place... Feel free to let me know how many rules I have broken.