Have I just destroyed a partiton??

[Skyguy]

Hello everyone,

I think I may have just messed up royally!!

I took the plunge and installed Linux Kubuntu 6.06 last night. I installed Linux to a partition on my larger (Slaved) HD and everything seemed to be okay. When it was done, I took out the CD and rebooted. Again, nothing odd happened except that I was having trouble viewing the files on my existing HD's (got an error saying the drives had not been mounted), but I now know why I got that message.

HOWEVER... When I restarted back in XP, I noticed that one of my pre-existing partitions has now vanished!

In it's place, I now see it listed as only a 'Local Disk' - and now XP is now asking me if I would like to format it!

When I installed Linux, I purposefully chose a very small size for new Linux partition - ~8 Gb. My original Windows setup for that secondary HD had 3 partitons. All but one had more than enough space to handle losing 8 Gb to Linux. The 'missing' partition had ~10 GB of space used and at least 20 GB free space.

Have I lost that partiton forever??? What can I do to get it back???

I would still like to use Linux (dual booting for the moment), but I think I need a lesson in how to install it properly so it and XP live in 'relative' harmony.
What I'll probably end up doing is move XP to my larger drive and giving Linux exclusive reign over my smaller drive.

Thank you!

Here is some information on my setup:

Current hardware configuration:
AMD K7 Athlon 2.6 Ghz CPU;
ASUS A7N8X-X MoBo;
512 MB DDR RAM;
Celestica Gold Edition RADEON 9200 128MB
WDC WD153BA Master HD 16 GB; WDC800JB-00ETA0 Slave HD 80 GB;
LITE-ON LTR 32123S 32x12x40x RW, Sony DVD-ROM DDU1615
ATI TV Wonder PCI Card;
and an old Creative AudioPCI (ES1371,ES1373) (WDM) sound card

Here is what Linux says about my current partition setup:

Disk /dev/hda: 15.3 GB, 15382241280 bytes
255 heads, 63 sectors/track, 1870 cylinders
Units = cylinders of 16065 * 512 = 8225280 bytes

Device Boot Start End Blocks Id System
/dev/hdal * 1 1870 15020743+ 7 HPFS/NTFS

Disk /dev/hdb: 80.0 GB, 80026361856 bytes
255 heads, 63 sectors/track, 9729 cylinders
Units = cylinders of 16065 * 512 = 8225280 bytes

Device Boot Start End Blocks Id System
/dev/hdbl 1 4157 33388960+ 7 HPFS/NTFS
Partition 1 does not end on cylinder boundary. f W95 Ext'd (LBA)
/dev/hdb2 4157 9730 44757122
Partition 2 does not end on cylinder boundary.
/dev/hdb5 4158 5203 8401995 7 HPFS/NTFS
/dev/hdb6 8317 9730 11346016+ 7 HPFS/NTFS
/dev/hdb7 * 5204 8185 23952883+ 83 Linux
/dev/hdb8 8186 8316 1052226 82 Linux swap / Solaris

[celsofaf]

I believe the case is: Windows cannot natively recognize ext3 partitions. ext3 is the formatting scheme that Ubuntu (and Kubuntu) use; Windows WILL NOT see it, but it is there!

If you want to view your ext3 (linux!) partition under Windows, try this: http://www.fs-driver.org/

[rcgreen]

Device Boot Start End Blocks Id System
/dev/hdbl 1 4157 33388960+ 7 HPFS/NTFS
Partition 1 does not end on cylinder boundary. f W95 Ext'd (LBA)
/dev/hdb2 4157 9730 44757122
Partition 2 does not end on cylinder boundary.
/dev/hdb5 4158 5203 8401995 7 HPFS/NTFS
/dev/hdb6 8317 9730 11346016+ 7 HPFS/NTFS
/dev/hdb7 * 5204 8185 23952883+ 83 Linux
/dev/hdb8 8186 8316 1052226 82 Linux swap / Solaris

OK, you have one primary partition, NTFS type,
and an extended partition containing four logical partitions.

Two of those are NTFS, one is Linux, and one is swap,
so if any former windows partitions have disappeared, yes it is lost.

You may have one anomaly that makes your Linux partition appear to Windows,
and appear unformatted. I have seen this before. Partitions have type numbers.
Your extended partition is type f W95 Ext'd (LBA). The logical partitions within
it will appear to Windows, even if they are Linux type, because of the type number
of the extended partition. You could use fdisk to change the type.

0  Empty           1e  Hidden W95 FAT1 80  Old Minix       be  Solaris boot
 1  FAT12           24  NEC DOS         81  Minix / old Lin bf  Solaris
 2  XENIX root      39  Plan 9          82  Linux swap / So c1  DRDOS/sec (FAT-
 3  XENIX usr       3c  PartitionMagic  83  Linux           c4  DRDOS/sec (FAT-
 4  FAT16 <32M      40  Venix 80286     84  OS/2 hidden C:  c6  DRDOS/sec (FAT-
 5  Extended        41  PPC PReP Boot   85  Linux extended  c7  Syrinx
 6  FAT16           42  SFS             86  NTFS volume set da  Non-FS data
 7  HPFS/NTFS       4d  QNX4.x          87  NTFS volume set db  CP/M / CTOS / .
 8  AIX             4e  QNX4.x 2nd part 88  Linux plaintext de  Dell Utility
 9  AIX bootable    4f  QNX4.x 3rd part 8e  Linux LVM       df  BootIt
 a  OS/2 Boot Manag 50  OnTrack DM      93  Amoeba          e1  DOS access
 b  W95 FAT32       51  OnTrack DM6 Aux 94  Amoeba BBT      e3  DOS R/O
 c  W95 FAT32 (LBA) 52  CP/M            9f  BSD/OS          e4  SpeedStor
 e  W95 FAT16 (LBA) 53  OnTrack DM6 Aux a0  IBM Thinkpad hi eb  BeOS fs
 f  W95 Ext'd (LBA) 54  OnTrackDM6      a5  FreeBSD         ee  EFI GPT
10  OPUS            55  EZ-Drive        a6  OpenBSD         ef  EFI (FAT-12/16/
11  Hidden FAT12    56  Golden Bow      a7  NeXTSTEP        f0  Linux/PA-RISC b
12  Compaq diagnost 5c  Priam Edisk     a8  Darwin UFS      f1  SpeedStor
14  Hidden FAT16 <3 61  SpeedStor       a9  NetBSD          f4  SpeedStor
16  Hidden FAT16    63  GNU HURD or Sys ab  Darwin boot     f2  DOS secondary
17  Hidden HPFS/NTF 64  Novell Netware  b7  BSDI fs         fd  Linux raid auto
18  AST SmartSleep  65  Novell Netware  b8  BSDI swap       fe  LANstep
1b  Hidden W95 FAT3 70  DiskSecure Mult bb  Boot Wizard hid ff  BBT
1c  Hidden W95 FAT3 75  PC/IX

There is more than one extended type. Choosing the right type will make your
partitions invisible to Windows, and remove the temptation to format them.