HELP resized partition and lost all data
 

I was resizing a fat32 storage partition on my laptop. I resized using YAST2 in Suse. Originally it was ~39GB and I resized it to ~37GB to make more space for the linux parition. However, after the resize, I could not add the extra space to the linux partition. What is worse is that I could not longer mount the drive. Also, when I boot into windows, it is no longer recognized as a formatted drive.

Most of my important data is on this partition and I need to get it back. How can I recover the data? YAST2 will not let me resize the partition back to its original size. When I try to use parted, it says the partition table is incorrect. How do I fix this?

Please help!

Thanks in advance!

Neil

gpart and sfdisk are your first level friends. If those don't help, use lde. Remember to take backups from every bit you overwrite when you do your recovering attemps. This way you can't make the situation worse.

Here is my /etc/fstab

/dev/hda6 / reiserfs acl,user_xattr 1 1
/dev/hda1 /windows/C ntfs ro,users,gid=users,umask=0002,nls=utf8 0 0
/dev/hda3 swap swap pri=42 0 0
devpts /dev/pts devpts mode=0620,gid=5 0 0
proc /proc proc defaults 0 0
usbfs /proc/bus/usb usbfs noauto 0 0
sysfs /sys sysfs noauto 0 0
/dev/cdrecorder /media/cdrecorder subfs fs=cdfss,ro,procuid,nosuid,nodev,exec,iocharset=utf8 0 0

fdisk -l

Disk /dev/hda: 60.0 GB, 60011642880 bytes
16 heads, 63 sectors/track, 116280 cylinders
Units = cylinders of 1008 * 512 = 516096 bytes

Device Boot Start End Blocks Id System
/dev/hda1 * 1 20321 10241406 7 HPFS/NTFS
/dev/hda2 20321 116265 48355650 f W95 Ext'd (LBA)
/dev/hda3 116266 116280 7560 82 Linux swap
/dev/hda5 20322 99147 39728304 c W95 FAT32 (LBA)
/dev/hda6 * 101587 116150 7340224+ 83 Linux

Oh, and I would recommend turning into local linux/filesystems guru from the neibourhood to get him/her to help you. If there is none available, I might be willing to help with the issue.

If your job/ass/life/over a monts work is dependant on those files, it might be better to use some professionals to do the job.

Gpart output


Begin scan...
Possible partition(Windows NT/W2K FS), size(10001mb), offset(0mb)
Possible partition(DOS FAT), size(39997mb), offset(10001mb)
Possible partition(Linux swap), size(7mb), offset(57224mb)
End scan.

Checking partitions...
Partition(OS/2 HPFS, NTFS, QNX or Advanced UNIX): primary
Partition(DOS or Windows 95 with 32 bit FAT): primary
Partition(Linux swap or Solaris/x86): primary
Ok.

Guessed primary partition table:
Primary partition(1)
type: 007(0x07)(OS/2 HPFS, NTFS, QNX or Advanced UNIX)
size: 10001mb #s(20482808) s(63-20482870)
chs: (0/1/1)-(1023/15/63)d (0/1/1)-(20320/4/59)r

Primary partition(2)
type: 011(0x0B)(DOS or Windows 95 with 32 bit FAT)
size: 39997mb #s(81915372) s(20482938-102398309)
chs: (1023/15/63)-(1023/15/63)d (20320/6/1)-(101585/9/63)r

Primary partition(3)
type: 130(0x82)(Linux swap or Solaris/x86)
size: 7mb #s(15120) s(117195120-117210239)
chs: (1023/15/63)-(1023/15/63)d (116265/0/1)-(116279/15/63)r

Primary partition(4)
type: 000(0x00)(unused)
size: 0mb #s(0) s(0-0)
chs: (0/0/0)-(0/0/0)d (0/0/0)-(0/0/0)r

parted gives me this output;

Warning: Unable to align partition properly. This probably means that another
partitioning tool generated an incorrect partition table, because it didn't have
the correct BIOS geometry. It is safe to ignore,but ignoring may cause
(fixable) problems with some boot loaders.

If I fix the partition table back to what it was before the resize, will the original partition be intact?

btw... dont know any linux gurus around here

Hmm.. the partition table looks quite sane. Is it this hda5, that is not working?
I see no mount directives in fstab for it.

yes hda5 is the one i tried to resize. The Gpart output shows the correct size (39997mb). However, now the partition goes from cylinder 20322 to 99147. If i resize it back to the original size of 20322-101586 will that cause any problems? Also, how do i do that?

Thanks for all your help

also hda5 is not in /etc/fstab because i umounted before resizing. I dont remember exactly how it was mounted. It was a fat32 drive. I tried remounting the resized drive but I cant remember the type and i get an error

I don't think that helps. If there is a problem accessing some files or directories, that might help, but a mounting problem sounds more like the starting offset is out of track. Could you give the output of "fdisk -l -u /dev/hda"?


PS. I sent you email about how contacting me in realtime, so we could have more dynamic conversation.

fdisk -l -u /dev/hda

Disk /dev/hda: 60.0 GB, 60011642880 bytes
16 heads, 63 sectors/track, 116280 cylinders, total 117210240 sectors
Units = sectors of 1 * 512 = 512 bytes

Device Boot Start End Blocks Id System
/dev/hda1 * 63 20482874 10241406 7 HPFS/NTFS
/dev/hda2 20482875 117194174 48355650 f W95 Ext'd (LBA)
/dev/hda3 117195120 117210239 7560 82 Linux swap
/dev/hda5 20483568 99940175 39728304 c W95 FAT32 (LBA)
/dev/hda6 * 102398751 117079199 7340224+ 83 Linux

Issue resolved.