Okay, here's the scoop. I was ripping DVDs to my computer (in windows 2000 pro) and for some odd reason it saved the info for one of them to my C drive. All the other DVDs automatically went to G, which is where my vfat partition is. G is also the harddrive i have FC3 on. So i moved the dvd info from the C to the G. A multi-GB file takes time, so i left the room once i saw it was doing it's thing. I come back and i can no longer access my G drive. I can open it, and it tells me how much space is used/free, but it shows no files. I tried to undo the move but to no avail. I decided to reboot my computer...

Upon booting my computer, instead of going into GRUB it just says "GRUB GRUB GRUB". Three times only. There is nothing i can do to get beyond this. Cntrl+Alt+Shft+F1 does nothing. If i leave the screen as it is, a few colored spots show up and some of the characters get messed up.

Things i have done:

+Gone into the BIOS setup and set the harddrive detection from auto to manual. This affected nothing.

+Unplugged the IDE cable to my G drive (technically hdb1) and rebooted. I forget exactly what happened, but it didn't do me a bit of good. I did not switch around any of the jumpers on the drives...i didn't want to take them out.

+Downloaded and burned the FC3 rescue disc. I don't have my system discs here with me because i'm on spring break and i didn't think i'd need them. The rescue disc did it's thing, which wasn't much, and then told me "You don't have any linux partitions." WHAT THE HECK?? I hit okay and am taken to a prompt which appears to be for the cd.


I really don't want to lose everything on that drive. It has all my music on it. Any help at all would be appreciated. Thanks...

Do you have a copy of Knoppix or Mepis? You could use one of them to check if you can access the Linux partitions are on G and see if everything is intact. Hopefully your partitions have not been deleted or corrupted somehow.

cool. I'm at 65% for my Knoppix download. i was looking for some kind of FC3 live cd but wasn't coming up with much. so i decided to get Knoppix. I'm glad you suggested it...that means i'm doing the right thing at the moment. :-) Thanks...

Any more suggestions?


Afterthought: So if my linux partitions are gone, would my vfat partition still be there? That's what i care about the most...i'll reinstall windows and linux and not care too much. But man...i've got over 60 gigs of music on that drive and most of it is my own which i burned myself. I don't think i have the patience to put that much music back on my computer.

Knoppix is always a good place to start - systemrescue CD has some good tools on it, and is another good option

I have heard good things about testdisk. More for deleted partitons, but if the structure of the partitions is still on the disk, it should find them.
Sounds unlikely though. The partition table describes where to look - if that's good, and the partitions themselves have been overwritten invalidly, I suspect you're out of luck.

Now about those backups ....
Bet you start doing them now.

Your questions will be answered when you load knoppix. Hopefully everything is intact.

okay...i'm on my own computer again but this time in Knoppix. So right on my desktop i'm shown my 4 partitions: hda1 (this is my windows drive), and hdb1,2,3 . hda1 works perfectly, everything is still there and intact. There is stuff on hdb1 but i don't know what to make of it. I thought hdb1 was my swap partition. hdb2 won't open...

"Could not mount device.
The reported error was:
mount: I could not determine the filesystem type, and none was specified"

i believe that one to be where FC3 is installed.

hdb3 is what i believe to be my vfat partition. I'm told that the drive contains 550.1GB Total. That obviously can't be right. Also, every single file and folder is gibberish. None of the folders contain any data/files and all of them have random weird characters for names. I'm hoping for the best since my partitions are at least still there.

The plan now is to redownload the FC3 stuff, burn em, and reformat hdb1 and 2.

If anyone else has suggestions on what to do prior to my reformatting...lemme know. It will take quite a while before i get all the discs downloaded.

Thanks again...

Maybe something corrupted your filesystems. Were all your mp3s on /dev/hdb3 (the fat partition)? If so this is a pain in the butt, coz you have probably lost them all.