Have I just destroyed a partition??
 

I think I may have just messed up royally!!

I took the plunge and installed Linux Kubuntu 6.06 last night. I installed Linux to a partition on my larger (Slaved) HD and everything seemed to be okay. When it was done, I took out the CD and rebooted. Again, nothing odd happened except that I was having trouble viewing the files on my existing HD's (got an error saying the drives had not been mounted), but I now know why I got that message.

HOWEVER... When I restarted back in XP, I noticed that one of my pre-existing partitions has now vanished!

In it's place, I now see it listed as only a 'Local Disk' - and now XP is now asking me if I would like to format it!

When I installed Linux, I purposefully chose a very small size for new Linux partition - ~8 Gb. My original Windows setup for that secondary HD had 3 partitons. All but one had more than enough space to handle losing 8 Gb to Linux. The 'missing' partition had ~10 GB of space used and at least 20 GB free space.

Have I lost that partiton forever??? What can I do to get it back???

I would still like to use Linux, but I think I need a lesson in how to install it properly so it and XP live in 'relative' harmony.


Thank you!


Here is my current hardware configuration if it's any help:

AMD K7 Athlon 2.6 Ghz CPU;
ASUS A7N8X-X MoBo;
512 MB DDR RAM;
Celestica Gold Edition RADEON 9200 128MB
WDC WD153BA Master HD 16 GB; WDC800JB-00ETA0 Slave HD 80 GB;
LITE-ON LTR 32123S 32x12x40x RW, Sony DVD-ROM DDU1615
ATI TV Wonder PCI Card;
and an old Creative AudioPCI (ES1371,ES1373) (WDM) sound card...

Post your fstab file, maybe that'll help.

Also, run cdfisk in a terminal and post what it is seeing.

Here is what Linux says about my current partition setup.

Disk /dev/hda: 15.3 GB, 15382241280 bytes
255 heads, 63 sectors/track, 1878 cylinders
Units = cylinders of 16065 * 512 = 8225280 bytes

Device Boot Start End Blocks Id System
/dev/hdal * 1 1870 15020743+ 7 HPFS/NTFS
Disk /devlhdb: 80.0 GB, 80026361856 bytes
255 heads, 63 sectors/track, 9729 cylinders
Units = cylinders of 16065 * 512 = 8225280 bytes

Device Boot Start End Blocks Id System
/dev/hdbl 1 4157 33388960+ 7 HPFS/NTFS
Partition 1 does not end on cylinder boundary.
/dev/hdb2 4157 9730 44757122 f W95 Ext'd (LBA)
Partition 2 does not end on cylinder boundary.
/dev/hdb5 4158 5203 8401995 7 HPFS/NTFS
/dev/hdb6 8317 9730 11346816+ 7 HPFS/NTFS
/dev/hdb7 * 5204 8185 23952883+ 83 Linux
/dev/hdb8 8186 8316 1052226 82 Linux swap / Solaris
Partition table entries are not in disk order

(The response I received from another individual didn't leave me feeling postive about the likelyhood of data recovery.)