Partitions disappeared

I had just finished triple booting Vista/Ubuntu/XP (in that order) and was going to reinstall the 64-bit version of Ubuntu, but when I open up gparted off the live disk it shows that my entire HDD is unallocated.

I booted into XP (the XP bootloader overrides GRUB when you install XP) and saw that I still had my data partitions. I can't check my ubuntu partitions without reinstalling GRUB but there's no reason to believe they're gone.

Any suggestions on getting gparted to work correctly again?

Thanks!

 

Are you sure you selected hda and didn't see the CD partition by mistake?

If so, try downloading the gparted program itself from it's website and burn that onto it's own disc. Then try again.

 

Thanks for the quick reply!

I'm pretty sure I'm looking at the sda drive and fdisk recognizes my partitions.

I ran gparted-livecd-0.3.4-11 and this did not recognize my partitions either.

I suppose I could try qtparted?

 

Hmm.. Odd. I don't really have any idea. maybe you should try chkdsk /R in your windows partition

 

Can you get on another computer?

I would download and burn a copy of System Rescue CD. You can find it listed on distrowatch or go to the website. It's handy to have in these situations and it includes GParted.

http://distrowatch.com/table.php?distribution=systemrescue

You started up the LiveCD and ran: sudo fdisk -l ?

 

Hey, thanks for the replies. I tried booting gparted from a 32-bit Ubuntu live-cd, a 64-bit Ubuntu live-cd and a Gparted live cd. I can't boot into any other OS other than the new XP OS because the XP bootloader overrides GRUB.

I'm going to try the gparted version released earlier this month.

 

Well, what happens? What do you mean, you can't boot GParted LiveCD or Ubuntu LiveCD up? It sounds like you need to go into your BIOS and change the boot device order. You need to change the order priority to CDROM then Hard Drive. That way, the XP Bootloader doesn't have a chance to take over and boot into XP.

I don't see any other reason why you can't boot up one of your LiveCDs. Check the BIOS for your device bootup order? What shows up?

Btw, you can repair Grub with one of those LiveCds I mentioned.

 

no, no. Dire NTropy can't get his gparted to see and partitions. He can boot gparted fine, just that it's not showing any of his partition spaces

 

Maybe this will help. I get this msg when booting gparted:

Unable to open /dev/scd0 - unrecognised disk label.
Can't have overlapping partitions.

Also, when I use testdisk -->...--> Analyze I get this output (attached pic)

 

In Linux what is your output when you enter(at the terminal):

 

ubuntu@ubuntu:~$ sudo fdisk -l
omitting empty partition (5)

Disk /dev/sda: 320.0 GB, 320072933376 bytes
255 heads, 63 sectors/track, 38913 cylinders
Units = cylinders of 16065 * 512 = 8225280 bytes
Disk identifier: 0x6906069f

Device Boot Start End Blocks Id System
/dev/sda1 * 1020 4935 31455270 7 HPFS/NTFS
/dev/sda2 4936 6240 10482412+ 7 HPFS/NTFS
/dev/sda3 6241 38913 262445872+ f W95 Ext'd (LBA)
/dev/sda4 12116 29188 137138872+ 7 HPFS/NTFS
/dev/sda5 6241 8851 20972794+ 83 Linux
/dev/sda6 8852 12115 26218048+ 83 Linux
/dev/sda7 29189 34410 41945683+ 7 HPFS/NTFS
/dev/sda8 34411 38326 31455238+ 7 HPFS/NTFS
/dev/sda9 38327 38913 471506 82 Linux swap / Solaris


Also I posted some testdisk details above

I think the biggest problem is the 'overlapping partitions'. Does anyone have experience with fixing this? I think that testdisk would work, but I'm slightly hesitant to use it.

Edit: Looking again, it seems as if the 'Applications' partition has somehow been changed to a primary partition... causing it to overlap with the extended partition. Is there a way (without gparted) to change this back to being a logical partition? I can boot into live cd's and xp only.

 

Corrupted partitions, most probably

 

When booting into both the live-cd's and XP I can access all of the partitions (except for the Linux partitions in XP ofc).

 

Hmmm... google “'omitting overlapping partitions"

For instance, you might get:
http://ubuntuforums.org/archive/index.php/t-861623.html

http://gparted-forum.surf4.info/viewtopic.php?id=62

http://bbs.archlinux.org/viewtopic.php?id=38423

http://ubuntuforums.org/archive/index.php/t-892603.html

One reason I use a separate grub partition and don't like to have much data on the operating drives is because of how Windows operating systems mess with your boot loader and partitions.

P.S. What is sda7 and sda8? I wouldn't do it like that. Too much trouble. Partition your NTFS formats first and in order. IMHO.

 

Thanks for your input, I think the best course of action now is to try to use testdisk to repair the partitions. Does anyone have experience with using testdisk to repair overlapping partitions?

 

This isn't enough information to debug what may have gone wrong here, but the partition map, which you posted later in the thread, shows some major problems. If you had Vista installed on your system first, and then you installed Ubuntu, (which gave you a Grub bootloader), and then finally you installed XP, that's not the ideal order you should be using to setup a triple boot system. Depending on the way you installed XP, you may have crippled your partition map, and the only way to fix it may be to wipe the hard drive and reinstall everything. The recommended way to setup a triple boot configuration is to install Ubuntu first, XP second, and Vista last. You can read about this in these two howtos,

Ubuntu Portal: How to Triple Boot Xp, Vista and Ubuntu
HOWTO: Triple-Boot Ubuntu 6.06, Windows Vista, and Windows XP

The first one is widely quoted on the net as a good source of information on how setup a triple boot configuration, but the original webserver that hosted the howto now directs to a blog page that doesn't list the howto any longer. Still you have the text on the Ubuntu portal page, just not the linked screenshots. If you have to install XP into a system that already has Vista installed, there are ways of doing it properly, but you need to make sure you follow certain steps, like those outlined here;

Install Windows XP in a Dual Boot with Pre-installed Windows Vista
Dual boot Windows XP on a pre-installed Vista PC

If you are set on trying to fix your overlapping partitions, then you can try testdisk. This Ubuntu users forum thread suggests that some users were able to fix the problem using testdisk. DiskPatch is a commercial tool which is supposed to enable low level disk fixing, and if you read their howto on how to fix partition problems, fixing overlapping partitions looks like it may take some time;

The thing is, even if you fix the overlapping partitions, the best advice is to back everything up, reformat and repartition the hard drive, and reinstall. So if you have everything already backed up, and you have the install CDs of Ubuntu, XP and Vista, handy, you would probably be better off, not wasting anymore time with this configuration and wipe your hard drive and start over. Then you can follow one of the triple boot howtos above, and make sure you perform the steps as described.

Good Luck..

 

Thanks so much for your input! I'll play around with testdisk for a while and if need be I'll reinstall everything (unfortunately Vista must be installed first, as I only have a recovery disk for that). I'll post back with results.

Edit: I'll first try out a run with a the latest version of gparted (4.x.x) and superGRUB. Its a shot in the dark but it'll be less trouble if it works

 

jas is right. Search your feelings. You know it to be true.

 

Update: Using testdisk and fdisk I was able to stop my partitions from overlapping and get gparted to work (so I feel that I accomplished something! woo). However after I installed Ubuntu again the GRUB menu refuses to boot the windows OS's properly. When I choose the Vista boot option XP instead boots and hangs. When I choose XP i get a 'no NTLDR, restart'.

I think its time to start all over .

My current plan is to first boot Vista off my recovery DVD, then use gparted to partition into:
[Vista OS][XP OS][Ubuntu OS][(Swap)(Vista Apps)(XP Apps)(Data)]
Then install XP and Ubuntu after it.

The sizes:
Vista OS - 30GB (what's the minimum?)
XP OS - 10GB (what's the minimum?)
Ubuntu OS - 25GB
Swap - 3GB
Vista Apps - 10GB
XP Apps - 40GB
Data - 180GB

Does this look fine? (Triple booting is much harder than dual booting ) At least I learned a lot about fdisk and testdisk.

Lastly, what is a good disk wipe program and is it generally a good idea to use one when reinstalling everything? Just to make sure, a recovery disk will still work with a wiped drive right?

Edit: woo reanimated my vista partition from the dead <scrambles to back up data>