Arch Linux

ABPAM

Member

Registered: 2020-07-19

Posts: 1

Saving disk data after changing the disk label type from DOS to GPT

Hi, everyone! First post
First of all, I didn't find a category, more suitable for my topic and since I have a problem on my laptop, I post it here. If this is not the right place, please move my topic to another, more relevant category

So, the thing is: I decided to retire my old laptop and to make it my home server (NAS, Media Station, Staging server for my web-based projects, etc.) It is an old Lenovo IdeaPad B570 I got for Christmas in 2011. About six months ago I installed Debian on it and backed up all my data to a separate partition (sda2), formatted in ext4. But since it had some problems (e.g. acting unstable, driver issues, and so on) and since I switched to an arch-based distribution on my primary laptop (Manjaro), I decided to set my server (the Lenovo machine) up with Arch. After a few lousy tries to boot it up (after an absolutely perfect installation process and facing the grub console afterwards), I understood that the problem lies in the missing EFI partition (the installation should've been done for UEFI mode). Anyway, I booted up the live USB stick again and tried to partition it properly. But, as Debian comes with a somewhat automatic graphical installer, it have set my disk label type to DOS. But Arch in UEFI mode needs a disk label type of GPT. So, from arch installer I ran

fdisk /dev/sda1

and

g

for creating a new GPT partition table with the hope that it will automagically convert the partition table and keep my partitions as is. Unfortunately (surprise, surprise) this did not happen and now I don't see my old partitions. The command was completed pretty rapidly, though and that's why I think no data was ACTUALLY lost (it is just not accessible the usual way).

My question is: How can I get my old partitions back, so I can save my data? I tried the SystemRescueCD, but it turns out it is nothing more than a GParted on XFCE (or, at least, I am not doing something properly). Any solutions?

Thanks in advance!

paulkerry

Member

From: Sheffield, UK

Registered: 2014-10-02

Posts: 611

Re: Saving disk data after changing the disk label type from DOS to GPT

for creating a new GPT partition table with the hope that it will automagically convert the partition table and keep my partitions as is. Unfortunately (surprise, surprise) this did not happen and now I don't see my old partitions.

"Whoops" - https://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/Fd … _new_table

You'll have to try recovery -
https://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/Pa … g#Recovery