I killed my fresh install with my previous OS?

SamuQu · 2019-10-15 03:41:47

I'm trying Arch for the first time in a brand new SDD I bought for this purpose. So I plug the drive in and installed Arch from a USB stick no problem.

I was having trouble enabling the wireless to work, and realise that my Broadcom device might need extra effort. Just to check how my old system has dealt with it, I tried to boot my old drive from usb.

It's a Debian based distro and it seems to boot up normally, but then it takes a while longer than usual. Then it shows some error regarding missing SWAP and other partition.

I assume it's because it's booting from usb and so I swap the drives, and it boots up as always.

I check the network adapter stuff I was curious about and then swap my drives back.

When I turned it on it tells me there's no bootable drive available.
I check the connections and everything's ok, I try again and nothing. I'm getting frustrated and so I disconnect everything and connect it again. Nothing. I swap the drives once more and my old Linux boots up no problem. I connect the Arch SSD from the USB and it shows as having no partitioning. The drive's gone.

I'm guessing something happened when i tried to boot my old system from usb, it must have messed up with the partition table of the drive it was supposed to boot from during the start up scripts. I don't know if it's worth it to try and recover a fresh install. I just want to share my experience to see if it's a common rookie mistake or if there's something more dark about this.
I'll keep the drive untouched in case there's a simple solution to this, but I'm not getting my hopes high.
Anyways, thanks for reading my story, I appreciate any comment

-SamuQu

Edit: I guess that some partitioning utility might be able to recover it? What tool would you recommend?

Last edited by SamuQu (2019-10-15 03:45:27)

fukawi2 · 2019-10-15 05:10:21

How did you install Arch? Have you booted the installer image to see what is on the SSD? (try: fdisk -l /dev/sda)

Arch Linux

#1 2019-10-15 03:41:47

I killed my fresh install with my previous OS?

#2 2019-10-15 05:10:21

Re: I killed my fresh install with my previous OS?

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