Ubuntu

New install of Ubuntu - Problem with disk partitioning

Asked by Robin Shonfield

I am new to Linux and have just installed Ubuntu 8.10 on an older PC (Pentium III 850Mhz 256Mb of memory) that was running Windows Me. I have two hard drives on the system a 400Gb Seagate (Master) and a 120Gb Western Digital (Slave). I had files on both, about 50 GB on the 120Gb drive and probably less that 30GB on the new 400GB drive. The new drive had recovered data from a earlier drive that was failing. I had re-installed Win Me on the new larger drive.

When installing Ubuntu I was confused by what I saw on step 4 (Partitioning) but when I canceled the installation I found that I could not reboot in Win Me. So I restarted the Ubuntu installation and selected the first guided option that looked like it would partition the 120Gb drive. I couldn't get the manual option to work. The installation worked well but I do not see the disks/files I was expecting. I cannot see any of the files on the 400GB drives. When I boot to Windows, I am booting from an old boot sector I put on the 120GB drive to while retrieving data from an earlier failing drive. It's not the normal Window boot that I had on the 400GB drive.

1) Is there any chance I can recover the files that were on the 400GB drive?
2) How do I get Ubuntu to see the 400GB drive?

I read through some of the other posted problems and there was one which suggested sudo fdisk -l be run to list the partitions. The results are shown below but I'm not familiar with what this means.

Disk /dev/sda: 400.0 GB, 400088457216 bytes
255 heads, 63 sectors/track, 48641 cylinders
Units = cylinders of 16065 * 512 = 8225280 bytes
Disk identifier: 0x00000000

   Device Boot Start End Blocks Id System

Disk /dev/sdb: 120.0 GB, 120034123776 bytes
255 heads, 63 sectors/track, 14593 cylinders
Units = cylinders of 16065 * 512 = 8225280 bytes
Disk identifier: 0x00056c96

   Device Boot Start End Blocks Id System
/dev/sdb1 * 1 6486 52098763+ c W95 FAT32 (LBA)
/dev/sdb2 6487 14593 65119477+ 5 Extended
/dev/sdb5 6487 14500 64372423+ 83 Linux
/dev/sdb6 14501 14593 746991 82 Linux swap / Solaris

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Wyatt Smith
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Best Wyatt Smith (wyatt-smith) said : 		#1

I don´t see any partitions on your 400 GB drive. It appears you may have wiped out the partition table. I suggest you try to recover the partitions on that drive with TestDisk.

Please read the documentation from their website.
http://www.cgsecurity.org/wiki/TestDisk

To install TestDisk from Ubuntu or the LiveCD. Enable the universe repository from the menu System>Administration>Software Sources>enable 'universe' repository

Then from the terminal
sudo apt-get install testdisk

To run the program
sudo testdisk

Hope this helps

Revision history for this message
Robin Shonfield (shonfield) said : 		#2

Thank you, thank you, thank you. TestDisk worked like a charm. All files were recovered and I can see the entire 400GB drive.

Revision history for this message
Robin Shonfield (shonfield) said : 		#3

Thanks Wyatt Smith, that solved my question.