Ubuntu 9.x install corrupted NTFS partition; repair corrupted TrueCrypt partition
 

Hi all.

I am a an occasional Linux user and have an improving technical ability with it. I recently installed Ubuntu Jaunty Jackalope and found it so good I am intending to switch from Vista Business (Vista can be a standby if I need to do something that requires Windows).

However when installing Ubuntu 9, unfortunately a 60Gb NTFS partition disappeared from Windows. Worried that I was going to lose it, I found an open source repair tool called TestDisk, which promptly restored my NTFS partition (yay) and turned a 30Gb TrueCrypt partition into free space (boo).

I am guessing it has just modified the partition table, and not touched the actual partition on the disk at all. The disk is in a relatively new laptop (18 months old, 160Gb) and in good condition afaik.

My idea to restore this is as follows: use cfdisk to do a "New partition" in this 30Gb free space, then choose a type of '82 - Linux swap / Solaris', which is the same type of another, healthy TrueCrypt partition (obviously I won't format it though!). However this is a bit experimental and I don't know if this will modify/destroy the partition.

If anyone can give me some advice on (a) how to do the above safely or (b) saving the 30Gb "free space" partition elsewhere so I can experiment restoring it, then it would be much appreciated!

Don't know if you already fixed this, but if you want to copy the partition so that you can experiment restoring it, then probably "dd" is the tool of choice. There's a massive "Learn the dd command" thread on this forum if you need examples.