Recovering a partition erased from the partition table

eichan · 2020-02-04 04:18:51

Hi all,

I lost my Linux partition on my laptop (Dell XPS 9360, Windows 10 and Archlinux, grub, only 1 partition on my Arch install, no swap). This happened when I reduced the size of my Windows partition (by 16GB because I want to create a swap for hibernation). I did that from Windows using a soft called AOMEI. Now my Linux partition shows as unallocated space in partitioning tools, grub starts in rescue mode and says 'unknown filesystem' when I try to ls any of the listed partitions.

I tried a tool called testdisk, which found a Linux partition after a long scan but told me it couldn't be recovered (with no further explanations). I have access to Windows (through direct Windows boot) and to whatever live USB could help me. I've seen here and there (post that I made on Reddit) that it could be an easy fix just needing to rewrite the partition table, but I have no idea how to do that safely.

Important stuff on my Linux partition is backed up, but I'd like to avoid the hassle of reconfiguring everything. Plus Arch is my dev environment and I'm working on a project at the moment, this has become a really inconvenient halt in my work... Any help much appreciated!

Head_on_a_Stick · 2020-02-04 06:17:35

https://www.rodsbooks.com/gdisk/repairing.html

eichan · 2020-02-04 10:52:32

Thanks for the link.

Unfortunately, all gdisk sees is a valid GPT and MBR, so I'm not sure what my recovery options are. Obviously I don't have a backup of my partition table.

Can I simply recreate the partition without formatting it? How can I make sure of the details of the partition I create to match the details of the lost one?

seth · 2020-02-04 14:59:45

You nuked the filesystem header, I assume what you did was sth. lilke:

|----Windows----|----Linux----|
=>
|--Windows--|------Linux------|

So the original linux partition starts somewhere inside the new linux partition?

Head_on_a_Stick · 2020-02-04 16:52:02

eichan wrote:

Can I simply recreate the partition without formatting it?

Yes but you would need to know the exact start & end sectors. Formatting the partition would destroy any information so you don't want to do that.

Arch Linux

#1 2020-02-04 04:18:51

Recovering a partition erased from the partition table

#2 2020-02-04 06:17:35

Re: Recovering a partition erased from the partition table

#3 2020-02-04 10:52:32

Re: Recovering a partition erased from the partition table

#4 2020-02-04 14:59:45

Re: Recovering a partition erased from the partition table

#5 2020-02-04 16:52:02

Re: Recovering a partition erased from the partition table

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