Hard disk partition disappeared
 

I am using Linux Mint 13 Maya on my desktop with a 500 GB hard disk.
I had partitions as shown below when i installed this system.
To my surprise, i see that my hard disk entries have just disappeared. I am simply not able to find them in my media directory or in my computer. To check if it is a problem with my the whole hard disk, i created a new partition in the unused 240 GB of 500 Gb. this new partition was detected correctly and i am able to use it.
How do i recover my other partitions on the disk????

roopesh@Rroopesh-Minto ~ $ sudo fdisk -l

Disk /dev/sda: 500.1 GB, 500107862016 bytes
255 heads, 63 sectors/track, 60801 cylinders, total 976773168 sectors
Units = sectors of 1 * 512 = 512 bytes
Sector size (logical/physical): 512 bytes / 512 bytes
I/O size (minimum/optimal): 512 bytes / 512 bytes
Disk identifier: 0x000d0438

Device Boot Start End Blocks Id System
/dev/sda1 * 2048 19531775 9764864 83 Linux
/dev/sda2 19533822 488282111 234374145 5 Extended
/dev/sda3 488295675 498047129 4875727+ 83 Linux
/dev/sda5 19533824 29296639 4881408 82 Linux swap / Solaris
/dev/sda6 29298688 78125055 24413184 83 Linux
/dev/sda7 78127104 488282111 205077504 83 Linux

Disk /dev/sdb: 4020 MB, 4020240384 bytes
92 heads, 27 sectors/track, 3161 cylinders, total 7852032 sectors
Units = sectors of 1 * 512 = 512 bytes
Sector size (logical/physical): 512 bytes / 512 bytes
I/O size (minimum/optimal): 512 bytes / 512 bytes
Disk identifier: 0x00000000

Device Boot Start End Blocks Id System
/dev/sdb1 * 8192 7852031 3921920 b W95 FAT32

From your message I don't understand clearly what disappeared.

To help us investigate, please provide full outputs of following commands:
and

Hi Didier,
here is fstab output
roopesh@Rroopesh-Minto ~ $ cat /etc/fstab
# /etc/fstab: static file system information.
#
# Use 'blkid' to print the universally unique identifier for a
# device; this may be used with UUID= as a more robust way to name devices
# that works even if disks are added and removed. See fstab(5).
#
# <file system> <mount point> <type> <options> <dump> <pass>
proc /proc proc nodev,noexec,nosuid 0 0
# / was on /dev/sda6 during installation
UUID=fcd695f5-8e1a-4e86-a91e-e91ca6a32275 / ext4 errors=remount-ro 0 1
# /boot was on /dev/sda1 during installation
UUID=cf318471-e5b2-4b6e-8b28-476c89ea9d9e /boot ext4 defaults 0 2
# /home was on /dev/sda7 during installation
UUID=5af90dea-d993-4761-a14c-682711697ff7 /home ext4 defaults 0 2
# swap was on /dev/sda5 during installation
UUID=6b645a71-62bb-4b7e-91aa-a1e1fc03f5de none swap sw 0 0



output of df -h
roopesh@Rroopesh-Minto ~ $ sudo df -h
[sudo] password for roopesh:
Filesystem Size Used Avail Use% Mounted on
/dev/sda6 24G 3.8G 19G 17% /
udev 1.6G 4.0K 1.6G 1% /dev
tmpfs 656M 1.1M 655M 1% /run
none 5.0M 0 5.0M 0% /run/lock
none 1.6G 612K 1.6G 1% /run/shm
/dev/sda1 9.3G 292M 8.6G 4% /boot
/dev/sda7 196G 29G 158G 16% /home
/dev/sda3 4.7G 198M 4.3G 5% /media/test2

Everything you had at time of installation is still there :
/dev/sda6 mounted as /
/dev/sda1 mounted as /boot
/dev/sda7 mounted as /home

and in addition:
/dev/sda3 mounted as /media/test2 (the new one you did set up yourself)

So I do not understand your question. What do you miss?
If this is /dev/sdb1, you have to provide an entry for it in /etc/fstab so that it be mounted whilst booting.

Do you know how to edit that file to do that?

Hi Didier,

Thank you for pointing this out. I am afraid that i was confused here in understanding the partition. Please pardon my ignorance in the Linux area.
No, i dont know how to edit fstab file. But i am trying my bit after finding some good instructions in web.

Again, thank you so much for all your patience and time.

Roopesh

Hi Didier,

Thank you for pointing this out. I am afraid that i was confused here in understanding the partition. Please pardon my ignorance in the Linux area.
No, i dont know how to edit fstab file. But i am trying my bit after finding some good instructions in web.

Again, thank you so much for all your patience and time.

Roopesh

First make sure your second hard disk is connected to the system (plugged in, in case it is an USB one).

Then issue following command:
For instance here I get following output:
Then use a text editor as root to append this line at the end of /etc/fstab:
Of course replace ADC0-969D with the output of blkid you will get for /dev/sdb1.

After that you will be able to mount the drive with :
But probably your system will detect it when you plug it in then mount it automatically.

If instead it is always attached to your computer, just delete "noauto," so it be automatically mounted at start-up.

Last word: you can replace /media with any existing mount point if you prefer.