Quite a pickle you've found yourself in, this is a good example
for why not using root much is good. If at this time all you've done is
repartition and save the partition table then the data *should* still be
in tact on the drive. Experience with data forensics has taught me this.
As someone else mentioned if you have the *exact* partition
table configuration prior to this re-partitioning nitemare then you
should be able to simply re-parition and set it back up. In order to do
this you need to have the exact "Start" and "End" values for each
partition. If these are off you could risk losing the data in the
partition or that it may just not be available.
Let me put the disclaimer out there that partitioning is a
destructive process by it's very nature. Just re-partitioning it as you
already have done *may* lose data (again it may not), and attempting to
correct it *may* lose data (again it may not). Just saying there is no
guarantee in anything dealing with re-partitioning.
Provided the Knoppix LiveCD has fdisk available, and provided
you have the exact partition table information from before the failure
you should be able to boot off the CD and correct the partition table.
Again while running under the LiveCD you should be able to attempt
mounting the partitions *ONE-BY-ONE* in *READ-ONLY* mode without running
fsck to see if the data is still there. The read-only mode and not
running fsck is to make sure that nothing is attempted to be written to
the drive. If this all succeeds then reboot again under the LiveCD and
test the partition data again to make sure it passes a "reboot test" and
is still available before attempting to boot it up under it's own power.
You may need to have a LILO or GRUB boot-floppy available if the MBR was
modified so as to make it non-bootable.
There is a risk of data loss, which comes with dealing with
re-partitioning but if you have accurate records of the prior partition
table and proceeed methodically and logically you can limit those risks.
I do not advice doing anything mentioned if you do not feel confident in
any of the steps necessary or the information you have on the partition
table. If you have an extra machine you could test with that you aren't
worried with the data, you could attempt it on there before trying it on
the machine in question. I would try it myself here if I had such a
machine, but unfortunately the only way I could do so would be through
VMware which might not be entirely accurate.
Regards,
Jeremy
On Fri, May 13, 2005 at 01:32:01PM -0400, Deboo ^ wrote:
> I accideantally fdisked my linux hard disk and deleted all
> partitions, created one single solaris partition. I wanted to do this
> on my second hard disk and thought I had connected the second one and
> disconnected the first, but hadn't disconnected the first one really.
>
> Now I am unable to boot. Booting from a knpix CD, when I check what
> partition is on that hard disk, I see only one partition, a bf type
> partition (which means solaris) but is unformatted. Here's the output:
>
> [EMAIL PROTECTED] fdisk -l /dev/hda
>
> Disk /dev/hda: 40.0 GB, 40060403712 bytes
> 16 heads, 63 sectors/track, 77622 cylinders
> Units = cylinders of 1008 * 512 = 516096 bytes
>
> Device Boot Start End Blocks Id System
> /dev/hda1 1 6253 3151480+ bf Unknown
>
>
> Since it's not yet formatted, I would think there must be a way to
> recover all the data still. I could install this knoppix on the small
> 3 GB hdd and connecting the big hdd, try to recover. Is there a
> program I can use to recover the data? Is it possible without using a
> second 40 GB hard disk or it is not?
>
> I have lots of data on it, useful data and lots of linux things I
> wouldn't like to lose. Can someone help?
>
> Thnks and Regards,
> Deboo
>
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