Help, data lost??!!
 

Hi,

I'm r-e-a-l-l-y new to linux, and i just installed mandrake 9.2
few days a go. Installation went just fine and i'm learning new all the time, but then i encountered one major problem.

I added my windows disk (win2000, fat32) to the system as a slave disk without really thinking about this. When starting the linux, linux asked something about new found hardware and something about operations to be done for the disk. I hit cancel at that moment. I didn't do any operations to the disk in linux at that time. After this, I tried to boot from the windows disk, which resulted in "no operating system" announcement. I also tried to use the windows disk in an another windows system as a secondary disk, but NO DATA were found from the disk, disk seemed unformatted to the system. It seems to me, that the whole file structure of the disk has been wiped out.

Is there something i can do about it to ragain the information from the disk?? i had some unbackupped information on the disk which was important.

Please help...

I don't know if this will help, but take a look at fstab or look into the control panel and find the disk, it is prob hdd or something like that. when u find it try browsing around the disk, just to check if the files are still there. As for the no operating found error, that I can't help u with, but if u didn't format that new disk, the files are still there. you just might have some editing to do to get it to work. Good luck

It shouldn't have done anything to the the disk. Is the partition table in tacked.
sfidk -l;
If it is try mounting it in linux as read only and copy the data off before doing anything else to try and recover.
mkdir /mnt/win2k
mount /dev/hda1 /mnt/win2k -t vfat -o ro;

Still not working
 

Thanks for advice. Mounting seems to work, but it seems the disk
is empty. The disk shows on desktop but seems empty. When using diskdrake, there seems to be no partitions or anything on the disk. However, type is ext2:vfat and status formatted/mounted.

Any further advice? Disk haven't been formatted at any time, so the data is there. Any ways to restore the partition table etc. what is missing?

If it is not showing any partitioning the partition table is probable wiped out. You would need to create the partition table "exactly" as it was before. I don't think you have lost any data yet. I have never done this so I can't confirm that this will work so you might want to get a second opinion.
You probably made this one big partition run fdisk /dev/hda.
Command (m for help): n
Command action
e extended
p primary partition (1-4)
p
Partition number (1-4):1
First cylinder (1-10, default 1):<return>
Last cylinder or +size or +sizeM or +sizeK (1-10, default 10):<return>
Using default value 10

Command (m for help):t
Selected partition 1
Hex code (type L to list codes):c
Changed system type of partition 1 to c (Win95 FAT32 (LBA))

Command (m for help):p

Disk test: 0 MB, 0 bytes
255 heads, 63 sectors/track, 10 cylinders
Units = cylinders of 16065 * 512 = 8225280 bytes

Device Boot Start End Blocks Id System
test1 1 10 80293+ c Win95 FAT32 (LBA)

Command (m for help): w
The partition table has been altered!

Calling ioctl() to re-read partition table.

You numbers will differ than mine. I have actually tries to restore a lost partition table using fdisk. I don't think you will lose any data, but you shound definatly get a second opinion.
Good luck.
Let me know how it goes.
G-rod

Thanks again G-rod!

Still not working, but i'm getting the plot. It seems, that succested partition creating didn't do much difference, anyway. Status of the disk remains. If anyone, including G-rod, has any further advice, I would appreciate them.