Arch Linux

tejiani

Member

Registered: 2025-03-27

Posts: 5

[SOLVED] Entire Arch OS inexplicably crashed. Seemingly lost forever.

hello all, i was just doing something very ordinary on my computer, and my system just crashed with no warning. All of it, I guess. Everything. whenever I shutdown my computer, it brings me only to the boot window of my PC and the Boot Sequence is “Ubuntu” followed by ‘Windows Boot Manager’. No mention of Arch.

i flashed an usb stick with arch to try and chroot into my partitions but i didn’t see them. lsblk showed me something called loop0 and sda->sad. mount /dev/sda1 /mnt/boot/EFI gave me an error message that says “mount point not found exist.”

i flashed an usb stick with Linux Mint (yes I know which forum this is) and it worked up until the “Installation” part, ie where I partition the drive. I got an error message there

The only thing that could have possibly caused this, I was messing around with a blank USB that was read-only. Mounting and unmounting but I did not touch the Linux partitions. I also deleted some nvidia files with no manager* (I forgot that exact term) a few days ago but why now?

What could have caused this? I fear I may have lost everything. Any fixes?

Last edited by tejiani (2025-07-10 14:48:51)

ewaller

Administrator

From: Pasadena, CA

Registered: 2009-07-13

Posts: 20,619

Re: [SOLVED] Entire Arch OS inexplicably crashed. Seemingly lost forever.

Start by booting from your Arch Linux install media, then post the output of lsblk
What boot loader had you been using?
uEFI or MBR?

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tejiani

Member

Registered: 2025-03-27

Posts: 5

Re: [SOLVED] Entire Arch OS inexplicably crashed. Seemingly lost forever.

This is the output. Forgive me if it’s sloppily done, I’m making all these posts on my phone.

NAME / MAJ:MIN / RM / SIZE / RO / TYPE / MOUNTPOINTS
loop0 / 7:0 / 0 / 942.7M / 1 / loop / /run/archiso/airootfs
sda / 8:0 / 1 / 119.5GB / 0 / disk
^sda1 / 8:1 / 1 / 119.5GB / 0 / part

I was using uEFI.

cryptearth

Member

Registered: 2024-02-03

Posts: 2,091

Re: [SOLVED] Entire Arch OS inexplicably crashed. Seemingly lost forever.

unless sda is the only drive in your system it looks like you lost your drive

tejiani

Member

Registered: 2025-03-27

Posts: 5

Re: [SOLVED] Entire Arch OS inexplicably crashed. Seemingly lost forever.

any explanation as to how?

cryptearth

Member

Registered: 2024-02-03

Posts: 2,091

Re: [SOLVED] Entire Arch OS inexplicably crashed. Seemingly lost forever.

honestly - no
but a story from not so long ago: a co-worker asked for help because his pc acted strange
I visit him and just wanted to examine his drive - so booted up arch install, mounted the drive, looked at some stuff, cleanly unmounted it and rebooted the system
with the next reboot the drive just died and the bios only showed it as 0 bytes capacity

what I try to say: some times modern hardware just dies - and often in a way "but it worked fine just 5 minutes ago - and now it's a paperweight"
looks like exactly that happened here but even a bit worse: the drive died so hard it doesn't show up anymore - tldr: seems like yes, you lost it, forever

tejiani

Member

Registered: 2025-03-27

Posts: 5

Re: [SOLVED] Entire Arch OS inexplicably crashed. Seemingly lost forever.

ah i see, thank u cryptearth. i’ve started from scratch data wise atleast 2 other times. atleast its only a few months of data. ill b fine. shit happens. i should invest in that 321 data back-up method though, better for this to happen now than in however many years

seems to me like my short-term solution is just change out my ssd hard drive, as its seemingly deceased n just dead weight

seth

Member

From: Won't reply 2 private help req

Registered: 2012-09-03

Posts: 75,077

Re: [SOLVED] Entire Arch OS inexplicably crashed. Seemingly lost forever.

From the install iso, post your system journal

sudo journalctl -b | curl -F 'file=@-' 0x0.st

If this isn't a notebook, check the power and sata cables (in doubt re-attach/replace them)

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tejiani

Member

Registered: 2025-03-27

Posts: 5

Re: [SOLVED] Entire Arch OS inexplicably crashed. Seemingly lost forever.

It was a fucking cable lolll. technology is so silly. the thin cable that connects to my ssd is the one that came loose? i suppose after 3 years it loosened slowly. just unscrewed the back and plugged it back in. thank u all. let me look around this pc and make sure all is well

cryptearth

Member

Registered: 2024-02-03

Posts: 2,091

Re: [SOLVED] Entire Arch OS inexplicably crashed. Seemingly lost forever.

well - ok, unexpected outcome but glad to hear it was just a lose cable - although kinda strange as sata-power usually fits quite tight and sata-data usually have additional latching clips
anyway
as for 3-2-1:
my personal opinion is this:
anything that can easily be re-acquired, like the OS, programs, games, don't really need any form of resiliency - if the drive dies it dies, gets replaced, the os, applications and games reinstalled and off you go as nothing happened
as for /home: it comes down to personal preference - it's the default location for personal caches, configs and downloads - so nothing that can't be reacquired same as the OS - so for me it's fine if /home is just a separate partition on the system drive
for anything else: use some form of raid array and don't let others tell you "but raid is not a backup" - that's bullshit! raid is the first line of defense and any sane backup target should be an array anyway - don't rely on single disks!
about 10 years ago (+/- could be a bit more or less) I switched to using raid and never lost any data again ever since

today I use ZFS with 8 drives in a raidZ2 config (it's "about" a raid6 - or more modern: distributed dual parity) mounted to a folder within my /home (I also thought about to move my /home entirely over but rather would clean up before doing so)
as for a "proper" backup: my backup target is yet another zfs array - this time in a raidz3 config (triple parity - 3 drives can fail) and offline (this means I only connect to it when uploading a current backup - just in case so I can restore from it when something happens to my direct attached array)
to complete the 3-2-1 rule I would require at least a copy on another media (tape) stored at a different location - but I'm not an oil sheikh

using a robust raid for your personal data is a pretty good start - but yes, you should have at least a second copy - even if it's just for the event of accidental deleting of important data

seth

Member

From: Won't reply 2 private help req

Registered: 2012-09-03

Posts: 75,077

Re: [SOLVED] Entire Arch OS inexplicably crashed. Seemingly lost forever.

don't let others tell you "but raid is not a backup" - that's bullshit!

Just for clarification:
Increasing the reliability of the data integrity with an adequate raid (not raid0...) is certainly not useless but does not meet the requirements of what is thought to be a backup.

A backup has first and foremost to protect your data against the IBCAK (idiot between chair and keyboard), but also data altering malware (ransom) - a raid will not do that.
As second consideration a backup has to protect the data against environmental hazard: if your office burns down and your server with it, the backup on the disk in the drawer right to the server won't help you much.
Obligatory: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1EBfxjSFAxQ

I get that this might seem like mincing words, but it is important to understand what measures achieve and to shorthand those concepts, we use different words for different things.

So, no: a raid is not a backup. By definition

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