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n0n3nt1ty

Member

Registered: 2014-10-24

Posts: 3

[solved] GPT partitions are gone

Hi everybody,

after updating my system a couple of days ago I cannot boot my machine anymore. It says it cannot find bootable devices. I am using Gummiboot.
I booted from a thumb drive and found that the partitions of my main system disk /dev/sdg are gone. There should be /dev/sdg1 through /dev/sdg4, but there is only /dev/sdg.

I printed the partition table with gdisk and this is what i got:

root@archiso ~ # gdisk /dev/sdg                             
GPT fdisk (gdisk) version 0.8.10

Partition table scan:
  MBR: not present
  BSD: not present
  APM: not present
  GPT: present

Found valid GPT with corrupt MBR; using GPT and will write new
protective MBR on save.

Command (? for help): p
Disk /dev/sdg: 31248704 sectors, 14.9 GiB
Logical sector size: 512 bytes
Disk identifier (GUID): F4576608-3EA8-4532-8F61-E86D527F59FE
Partition table holds up to 128 entries
First usable sector is 34, last usable sector is 31248670
Partitions will be aligned on 2048-sector boundaries
Total free space is 2014 sectors (1007.0 KiB)

Number  Start (sector)    End (sector)  Size       Code  Name
   1            2048         1050623   512.0 MiB   EF00  EFI System
   2         1050624         5244927   2.0 GiB     8200  Linux swap
   3         5244928        13633535   4.0 GiB     8302  Linux /home
   4        13633536        31248670   8.4 GiB     8300  Linux filesystem

Command (? for help): 

I would really appreciate any hints on how I can get my system running again without having to reinstall everything from scratch...

Last edited by n0n3nt1ty (2014-10-25 14:48:29)

Spider.007

Member

Registered: 2004-06-20

Posts: 1,175

Re: [solved] GPT partitions are gone

I'd say this is pretty clear?

Found valid GPT with corrupt MBR; using GPT and will write new protective MBR on save.

so enter 'w' and you should be done

Last edited by Spider.007 (2014-10-24 17:04:24)

ratcheer

Member

Registered: 2011-10-09

Posts: 912

Re: [solved] GPT partitions are gone

I don't understand. It shows four partitions.

Tim

PS - Yeah - what spider said.

Last edited by ratcheer (2014-10-24 17:05:48)

teateawhy

Member

From: GER

Registered: 2012-03-05

Posts: 1,138

Website

Re: [solved] GPT partitions are gone

Protective MBR means that the MBR is not actually in use, but still present to avoid any GPT-unaware program from overwriting the partition table.
In your case something seems to have damaged the protective MBR. This is not really a problem since the MBR is only a placeholder, and does not contain information important for booting.
Restore it as Spider said, and see what happens.

n0n3nt1ty

Member

Registered: 2014-10-24

Posts: 3

Re: [solved] GPT partitions are gone

Thank you for your replies so far. I was hoping I could avoid rewriting the partition table because I fear all my data will be gone afterwards, right? Is this the case and if so, do you know a way to backup at least my root partition?

WorMzy

Forum Moderator

From: Scotland

Registered: 2010-06-16

Posts: 11,872

Website

Re: [solved] GPT partitions are gone

I was hoping I could avoid rewriting the partition table because I fear all my data will be gone afterwards, right?

No, the partition table is basically just a list of partitions on a disk (or array, or whatever), writing the table does not overwrite any data on any of the partitions.

Last edited by WorMzy (2014-10-25 14:40:07)

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n0n3nt1ty

Member

Registered: 2014-10-24

Posts: 3

Re: [solved] GPT partitions are gone

I rewrote the partition table and everything is back to normal.
Thank you so much everybody.