[H-GEN] Partition table recovery

gavin duley gavin at microcomaustralia.com.au
Tue Oct 26 17:04:00 EDT 2010


On 26 Oct 2010, at 21:17, David Seikel wrote:

> On Tue, 26 Oct 2010 19:08:08 +0100 gavin duley <gavin at microcomaustralia.com.au> wrote:
>> One option would seem to be to boot a livecd such as Ubuntu and use a
>> program like gpart or fdisk either attempt to recover any existing
>> partitions, or just wipe the whole thing and start again.
> 
> Boot from a live CD, Use dd to at least wipe out the first few blocks,
> then fdisk to create new partitions.

This sounds like a good option, though the user in question, although fairly computer literate, is new to Linux/Unix-like systems so it would be better to choose something that is reasonably user-friendly.

Maybe use dd to wipe out the first few blocks, and then use whatever utility Puppy Linux uses for its installer to recreate the partitions? 

James Mills mentioned testdisk in an earlier email, this might be another good option to look into, that looks like it would fit the bill too. Wikipedia mentions that this is included on a distribution called 'Ubuntu Rescue Remix', which might be worth checking out. 

>>> A while ago I had used fdisk to partition the wrong device, but I
>>> had done fdisk -l to list all partitions on all drives first.  So
>>> it was simply a matter of restoring the partitions using the
>>> information still on screen from that list.
>>> 
>>> It would be useful to know why gparted failed.  Is the hard drive
>>> failing anyway?  Backups are useful things.
>> 
>> I'm not certain. It's an old computer, so it could be a failing hard
>> disc. On the other hand, I've always heard that parted was still
>> fairly buggy and so should be used with caution...
> 
> I generally use fdisk, but it's not very user friendly.  I don't need
> user friendly.  Always been reliable for me, barring the odd brain fart
> on my part as described above.

I've used fdisk a bit too, and it's certainly good and reliable but can be intimidating.

The problem with parted seems to be that because it's so easy to use, it's tempting to sit around tweaking/changing the way you want the partitioning to be and after a while it seems to just get confused. It seems okay if you run it, tell it exactly what you want and apply that, keeping any fiddling/tweaking to a minumum.

Thanks again for all the suggestions so far. Hopefully I'll hear back soon as to what has or hasn't worked.

gavin,

-- 
Honestly, if you're given the choice between Armageddon or tea, you don't say 'What kind of tea?'
		-- Neil Gaiman

Gavin Duley
<gavin at microcomaustralia.com.au> <gpd at sdf-eu.org>
WWW: http://www.gavinduley.org/




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