Lost partitions

[gmbastos]

Hello. All!
I am really in need of your help:
I have experienced using DOS FDISK on my HDA, just to find out that it completely screwed things up. I have an up to date back up, made with the graphical front end of LILO over KDE (which happens to be the same used in Mandrake 9.0 'from the scratch' graphical installation). I am unable to restore my poor back up as Mandrake installation CD's didnot help (once you have a formatted partition ready to receive Linux it doesnot show the partition util), because I need the documentation not (at least easily enough) available.
I have tried the console version of FDISK, LILO, GRUB and GPART; but I didnot find any option/command that would let me restore my partitioning back up.
Does anyone know how could I execute the graphical partitioning front end included in Mandrake 9.0 distribution (or any utility that restore its back up files)?
I am a full week walking around this matter. No progress yet and I need to access my /home partition.
Thank you.

[bg703]

If I'm getting this right, you had a dual boot set up with Windows and Linux and then re-partitioned your Windows partition. If this is the case, then you have changed the boot partition and destroyed your dual boot. The linux partitions are probably still there as fdisk will not even recognize the ext3 file system and,therefore, cannot remove them. If you have a linux boot disk you can use it to boot to your Linux system. If not, you can make one from the image available on your Mandrake CD.

[gmbastos]

I was trying to make Windows read my windows partitions on my Linux HD (in order to create a dual boot).

As nothing appeared to solve, I have decided to experience use DOS FDISK to repartition my last partition (win partition). I did a back up using DiskDrake GUI and performed the insane act.

What I should have realized is that Windows was not able to find any win partitions because I had not created any prymary win partition on this disk (only extended ones)...

DOS FDISK screwed up all my partitions that were placed after my first win partition. And then began my pain.

I have used the installation CD-ROM boot and rescue toolset, besides some other utilities I have got from the internet.

Now I must still figure it out how I will convince Windows to install itself on this prymary partition, but Linux is now up and running. Besides that win can read my win partitions too, but refuses to perform writes at them.

[gmbastos]

Now I am up and running my Linux box and I guess it is time to tell you how.

Until now I have tried just Mandrake Linux, so this post will suffer an overwhelming bias towards Mandrake toolset.

The partitioning back up function from GUI frontend to DiskDrake looks great and it is cute; but it is not intended to help you if your main system hard drive crash. If you need to recover your system main disk, you will need to run diskdrake from shell (a real one) as root (ta-daaa!). )

What is not told to you is just that, even though you chose to install all documentation, its documentation will be missing.

In order to create your partitions back up file you must run diskdrake and, from its TUI (its commandline parameters are still somewhat limited), choose any partition and then search the option "More". Then you are presented the back up options, which permits you: save (back up) your current partition information to a file, restore a previous back up and try to guess your partitioning scheme. This last one is better to forget; if you need something like it (if you have crashed already) try Gpart (great software). Gpart is included in Mandrake installation CD's. Another tip: it is better for you to save this back up file on any other physical disk (ta-daaa!).

If you dislike Mandrake tools, or cannot install diskdrake for any reason, the recommendations in the HOW-TO's are easy to follow and may be very effective, provided you have read them prior to the crash (and followed the recommendations too, of course).

If you are just too busy to read the HOW-TO's for now, just issue right now on your favorite shell (as root):

fdisk -l /dev/hd? | lpr

This will print all your disks partitioning informations, including your CD-ROM drives as well. Just ignore CD-ROM drives or you may, at your discretion, exchange the interrogation mark for you hard drive letter. If you cannot print, strip out the pipe and the lpr command and write down to a sheet of paper *_ALL_* the information printed.

Then, when you crash, you will turn your attention towards HOW-TO's.

I would recommend you to keep both the back up file from DiskDrake and the paper copy: the back up file is rather useful, but a sheet of paper is more difficult to reformat. Of course you must be able to find them when you are in need (if you are reading this and doing all this stuff you will not be in despair).

See you later.