Partition deleted on Ubuntu installation

Windows confuses drives and partitions. It talks about a C: drive and a D: drive for example when in many cases there is only one physical drive.

If this is the case then if you selected "Use entire drive" it will have been overwritten; but you have good backups; right?

To check if you had one partitioned drive or separate drives open a terminal by pressing CTRL+ALT+T

and enter

sudo fdisk -l

On my system I see

-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
warren@min:~$ sudo fdisk -l
[sudo] password for warren:

Disk /dev/sda: 8589 MB, 8589934592 bytes
255 heads, 63 sectors/track, 1044 cylinders, total 16777216 sectors
Units = sectors of 1 * 512 = 512 bytes
Sector size (logical/physical): 512 bytes / 512 bytes
I/O size (minimum/optimal): 512 bytes / 512 bytes
Disk identifier: 0x00022602

   Device Boot Start End Blocks Id System
/dev/sda1 * 2048 15728639 7863296 83 Linux
/dev/sda2 15730686 16775167 522241 5 Extended
/dev/sda5 15730688 16775167 522240 82 Linux swap / Solaris
warren@min:~$

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as this shows
/dev/sda1
/dev/sda2
/dev/sda5

I have 1 drive with 3 partitions

If I had two drives I would see other letters, for example

/dev/sda1
/dev/sda2
/dev/sda5
/dev/sdb1

One drive with 3 partitions and one drive with only one.

If your system shows multiple drives then you only need to mount the drive in the file system. If you re open the question
with the output of the command I gave earlier we will be able to tell you how to do that.

Otherwise just restore from your backups. If you can't do that for some reason ask again and we will advise on how to try and recover your data.

Data recovery is not perfect however so you will have lost some of it forever.

Hi,

thanks for quick answer.
I do have one drive - one physical disk. I´m sure about this. And unfortunately I don´t have any backup.
I mostly work with Windows because of the work but I wanted linux for my own notebook.
In Windows if you reinstall it just format the partition you select, the other partitions are untouched.
Shame on me, I should do the backup, cause I´m newie in linux.
So please if you could tell how to try to recover data that would be great - better something then nothing.

Thanks.

I have selected option "Replace Windows 7 with Ubuntu" during installation.
Just like on this pic

http://www.psychocats.net/ubuntu/images/installingprecise07.jpg

There is a warning that it will erase all programs, music, documents etc, but I thought that this is regarding the folders on C partition. Because some people store they data in those preset windows folders. That is not my case. I keep my data always on a different partition.
The same warning is also during Windows installation but it is related only to the selected partition.
There should be a warning that it will erase all drive (disk)...

I'm no expert on data recovery, maybe others can help. But take a look here
https://help.ubuntu.com/community/DataRecovery

yes warren-hill got you right lead, but more specific app you`ll gonna need is: https://help.ubuntu.com/community/DataRecovery#Testdisk

The most important is that you don`t touch partition anymore except with Testdisk and you can have your partitions back in about 2 minutes.

Step by Step instructions, here: http://www.cgsecurity.org/wiki/TestDisk_Step_By_Step.

The second important thing is that, even it`ll be hard not to worry, please don`t worry and rather read 2 times everything. After that it`s easy.

And please report back.