I have two partitions
On my hda6 partition I have about 10GB of stuff, like music and software.
My root system is installed on hda1.

Problem and question:
Q1: Is it possible that when reinstalling linux on partition /dev/hda1, partition /dev/hda6 gets fu**ed up, even if you didn't touch it.

Q2: Is it possible to use a partition without specifying a filesystem, if yes how?

Q3: What could I do to recover my stuff?

Read on for clarification on my problem, any help would be greatly appreciated.
Thanks in advance

Now twice before I had to reinstall everything (trying out new stuff and configurations etc.), I never touched the hda6 partition and I didn't have any problems before.
After each reinstall I could mount and access the hda6 partition.

Now after a third reinstall I suddenly can't access it anymore.
I do a mount /dev/hda6 /mnt/hda6 and I get a input/output error and it says I should specify a filesystem type. I know this usually means it's fuc*ed up because it should see the filesystem automatically.
Anyways I specify the filesystem type by doing a mount -t ext2 /dev/hda6 mnt/hda6.
Then I get a: wrong fs type, bad option, bad superblock on /dev/hda6,
or too many mounted file systems.

This means probably that a filesystem is missing from that partition, but I haven't changed anything, so how can it be gone?
Is it possible that there never was a filesystem, can you use a partition without specifying a filesystem?

This is my partiton table seen with fdisk -l

Device Boot Start End Blocks Id System
/dev/hda1 1 729 5855661 83 Linux
/dev/hda2 730 4864 33214387+ 5 Extended
/dev/hda5 730 790 489951 82 Linux swap
/dev/hda6 791 4864 32724373+ 83 Linux

Thanks again!

No, to the best of my knowledge you can't use a partition without specifying a filesystem for it. Besides, fdisk is showing you that it uses a Linux fs. If you didn't select any operations for that partition during Debian installation, I'd say you're just having a mounting problem.

It's conceiveable that it uses the ext3 fs, what happens if you don't specify the ext2, that is, just leave it to detect it automatically?

The best way to recover data is of course to have backed it up, but obviously that must not be an option. In any case it doesn't seem to me that the partition was rewritten. It's possible that you inadvertently selected to format it, but since you'd successfully done it twice I'd say it's not likely.

If you can't get the mount to work, I would suggest to you to burn or borrow a Knoppix live CD and start it up on your machine. Once it boots up (using RAM only) you should have icons on the default KDE desktop that you can use to mount existing partitions. That should show you if there's anything on the partition. You might also want to find a way to back up the essential data now if you can find it.

If the partition has in fact been reformatted, I suppose a disk expert might be able to recover some of it, but for practical purposes I probably would not go to that length for music and software. Perhaps there are programs out there though.

Thanks for the quick answer.
When I don't specify a filesystem it gives me an input/output error saying I should specify one. I have tried all the filesystems, it doesn't accept anything.
As for formatting, I too am pretty sure it hasn't been formatted.
I actually have a knoppix 3.6 cd and I have tried it before posting here, kde gives me the hda icons on the desktop. When I click on the hda1 icon it gives me it's contents, but when I click on the hda6 icons it just freezes and does nothing.
Weird??

Please don't take my word for it, but it sounds to me almost like somthing is wrong with the partition. It obviously is in the partition table since it's listed by fdisk. If it had simply been reformatted, then it should mount and just be empty. But it being listed but unable to be mounted, I don't know what can be wrong other than a disk problem. That doesn't mean there can't be something else wrong though.

So I guess I don't know, maybe I can only help by making the thread visible.

Bump Bump

You seem to have an /etc/fstab problem. If you don't have things properly set up there nothing will work. Check to see if your missing partition is listed there.

Thanks for the reply
I looked at /etc/fstab and the partition actuallyh isn't listed.
What should I do now

I added the partition to the list with the following string :

/dev/hda6 /mnt/hda6 ext2 defaults 0 0

I then tried to mount it again, and it just froze up.
So my guess is, this isn't the proper way to do it
If this is so, how should I proceed.

Thanks

That would seem to work fine. Read up on it yourself, though, before rebooting with it, at:

man fstab