Arch wipe out my Debian. Help

falcon · 2009-09-25 12:51:42

I have try out Arch in VirtualBox and it was working wonderfully. Now, I decided to install and dual-boot with Debian.

There are 4 primary partition in my hard disk. Debian occupied the first two, so I install Arch in the remaining partition. During hard disk partition, I select the un-use partition, which is sda3. But it gave me the "Bootable" selection error after "write. I read through the forum and decide to ignore it, write and proceed to have swap in the other partition.

The horror came when I click "Done". I noticed that Arch was writing to Sda1(debian) and sda3. Then the installation failed. When I attempted to reboot back to Debian, I have a error 15 and Debian is gone. I use SuperGrub to boot it back but no file. Then, I used live-cd to boot and check the debian partition. It only show a "lost & found" folder. My Debian is gone.

My questions:

1. Why does Arch wrote to the first partition sda1? Other dual-boot distro did not do it.

2. Why does Arch insisted that the selected partition be bootable? I intend to grub-boot from debian.

3. Why can't I have Arch install in one partition? I tried other distro and I can install in one partition without the "nagging" from Arch to install in 2 partitions.

4. Is there any other way to recover my debian partition?

Thanks.

Gen2ly · 2009-09-25 20:25:21

Welcome to the forums falcon.

1. Why does Arch wrote to the first partition sda1? Other dual-boot distro did not do it.

The arch installer did what you told it to do. To tell the installer in Prepare Hard Drives to Manuallyconfigure block devices... and then in the dialog "the installer has detected previous block devices... Do you want to use these as a starting point?" Select No. Then be sure to choose the right disk/partition. There's a couple guides for installing on the wiki if you haven't seen them.

3. Why can't I have Arch install in one partition? I tried other distro and I can install in one partition without the "nagging" from Arch to install in 2 partitions.

I get the nagging but was able to install one partition.

4. Is there any other way to recover my debian partition?

Unfortunately it looks like your Debian partition got it. The superblocks and inodes all got recreated which is pretty destructive. You can try this thread I've seen in the Ubuntu forums.

falcon · 2009-09-25 23:34:44

Thank you Gen2ly for your replied.

I must have missed noticing the "the installer has detected previous block devices... Do you want to use these as a starting point?" part. I will search through the wiki again on this issue.

I tried to recover the debian partition using testdisk from Parted Magic. You are right, all the superblocks ,etc was "wiped" out and non-recoverable.

I have to installed everything over again but it has always been a good learning process when using and installing linux distro. Learning from others and also from my own mistakes and carelessness.

Gen2ly · 2009-09-26 03:34:43

I'm not even sure, just what careless means, but mistakes happen to me all the time.

"Seldom do we learn from our own successes"

Dante

Last edited by Gen2ly (2009-09-26 04:20:17)

Arch Linux

#1 2009-09-25 12:51:42

Arch wipe out my Debian. Help

#2 2009-09-25 20:25:21

Re: Arch wipe out my Debian. Help

#3 2009-09-25 23:34:44

Re: Arch wipe out my Debian. Help

#4 2009-09-26 03:34:43

Re: Arch wipe out my Debian. Help

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