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Having trouble installing a piece of hardware? Want to know if that peripheral is compatible with Linux?

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Old 12-19-2011, 12:19 AM   #1
Methodminus
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Started installing Linux on External HDD by Accident, Now Won't Mount


Okay! So I'm pretty certain I've managed to ruin this drive, or at least forfeit all the information on the drive. I'm hoping I'm wrong.

The long end of it is I think my internal hard drive was no longer working properly, and I had tried to reinstall the latest version of Linux a dozen times before getting a new hard drive to see if it would work and it did. In the process I was using another internal drive temporarily. For some reason, when I would start up I could load the operating system on the other drive, even after I updated boot grub(I think thats what its called). Anyway, most of that isn't really import.

So the short end of it is I decided to just forget about the temporary drive I was using and just have both operating systems on the same drive. In the mean time, I had my external drive plugged in, and when the installation window came up I accidentally started installing on the external instead of the internal drive. When I realized what I had done I canceled it. Once I had things properly set up on the new drive though I couldn't get the external drive to mount.

I assumed maybe the partition was the problem, or maybe the swap. So an hour or so about, I put the installation disk in so I could go through the menus and delete the partitions I didn't want. But besides the swap the rest of the information was all on the same partition which was apparently "unknown". Some of what is on this drive is really important to me, and I'd like to preserve it before reformatting the whole drive to salvage it.

Is my information lost forever? Or is there some way I can access it?

If the type of drive matters, its a Western Digital 750 GB Passport I think. I originally formatted in SwissKnife, for fat32 so I could access my information on linux and windows. For some reason it never formatted quite right, but I kept on using it regardless. The drive would only show up on Linux and MacOS, but not on Windows. I mention that in case that might have anything to do with it.

Thanks
 
Old 12-19-2011, 01:04 AM   #2
james2b
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With the external drive connected try booting to a partition tool on CD such as GParted; http://gparted.sourceforge.net/index.php then select that drive with that upper right drop down box, and view what it shows for detected partitions, then post back the details. It can be a corrupted partition table which is on the master boot record, and can be fixed with that Test Disk Tool found here; http://www.sysresccd.org/Main_Page . Which Linux did you install, Ubuntu ? Also you can boot to a Live Linux CD such as Ubuntu, and it should have a Disk Utility tool to use both for mounting and to do any changes to a drive's partitions, and some Linux Live CD disks have that GParted tool too.
 
Old 12-19-2011, 10:04 AM   #3
Methodminus
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:scratch:

Quote:
Originally Posted by james2b View Post
With the external drive connected try booting to a partition tool on CD such as GParted; http://gparted.sourceforge.net/index.php then select that drive with that upper right drop down box, and view what it shows for detected partitions, then post back the details. It can be a corrupted partition table which is on the master boot record, and can be fixed with that Test Disk Tool found here; http://www.sysresccd.org/Main_Page . Which Linux did you install, Ubuntu ? Also you can boot to a Live Linux CD such as Ubuntu, and it should have a Disk Utility tool to use both for mounting and to do any changes to a drive's partitions, and some Linux Live CD disks have that GParted tool too.
I have the latest version of Linux(10.11 or 11.10, whatever it is, sorry) installation disc. I booted up with it in and the disk connected. It couldn't detect the format of the drive when I did it before, but I don't know anything about an upper right drop down box, but maybe that only exists with the G-parted you're talking about. I'll try it again, or try with the tool you posted and see what I get.
 
Old 12-24-2011, 08:54 AM   #4
Methodminus
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Okay. So I finally had time to do this. And it was pretty much was I knew it was already. I'm talking about using Gparted. The drive is separated as such:

/dev/sdb1 Unknown 695.61 Gib
/dev/sda2 extended 3 Gib
sda5 linux-swap 3 Gib
unallocated unallocated 1 Mib

I looked around through the option to find something to do, and there was something like, scan for partitions or something...and it look like 12 hours, and found nothing else. I'm about to download the other program you mentioned, if you can give me a step by step on what I need to do.
 
Old 12-24-2011, 09:16 AM   #5
Methodminus
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Actually, I don't understand what the second link is to, and what I'm supposed to do.
 
Old 12-26-2011, 08:10 PM   #6
james2b
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Cool

That drop down box is in the GParted tool upper right corner and is used to select which hard drive to view or edit the partitions on, ( such as /dev/sda, and /dev/sdb, or an external drive connected USB can be as; /dev/sdf ). The System Rescue disk is done the same way as the GParted tool, burn an image of the .iso file to CD and boot to it, then open up the Test Disk tool, and select the drive with the issue, then follow the steps to rebuild the partition table if needed.
 
Old 01-04-2012, 07:56 PM   #7
Methodminus
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Okay. So I thought I posted this before, and I guess I didn't. I also emailed you directly, thinking it would be quicker. But you never answer.

Anyway, so heres the situation: When I run the test it cannot recognize the format of the drive. The suggested format is "none", and I have to pick what format it is to proceed. So I don't know if I should pick "none" or pick fat32, since that's what it is supposed to me. I don't want to pick the wrong one though, just incase.
 
Old 01-04-2012, 09:06 PM   #8
james2b
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Yes do select the fat32 file system as the format type. Also in that Test Disk tool it should show your drive partitions as either, D for deleted, P for primary, E for extended, L for logical, and one primary should show as bootable. As I do remember from way back when I used it, it also displays the partitions types color coded to help select them correctly. So if your external drive shows a D for deleted, just change that to most likely a P for primary type. Also a file system check is a good idea to run on that drive to check for errors in file allocation table, (FAT32). That tool should be on that system rescue CD.
 
  


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