Ralf Mardorf wrote: ..... >>> I've done this before, but before I got an error message that differs >>> from other messages, but I can't remember it. It was something like >>> "Wrote partition table to disk ... couldn't re-read. >>> >> I think the message you are referring to means you need to reboot to >> activate the changes made to the partition table.
>> Possibly because the partition table got damaged by trying to re-write >> it without rebooting (see my comments above). > > Okay, now I understand, I need to dd the stick and before I do anything > else, I need to reboot. Even disconnecting and connecting isn't enough? > No, rebooting after running dd will not change anything. What I meant was that I think the error message which you couldn't remember after you ran cfdisk was telling you that a reboot was required to activate the partition changes you had made. Until you rebooted, the partitions were in an unstable state, and if you had tried to write to them etc before rebooting it could have damaged the partition table and/or other low level disk structures. >>> *Any hints how to recover the partitions* and if it's safe to backup the >>> broken IDE drive *are welcome*. I'm now to tired to google, read and >>> risk anything, the only thing I'll try to do now, is to take a look, if >>> the Suse recovery tools can find any Linux on the IDE drive, but I won't >>> boot or try to repair them until I'm full focused again. >>> >> You could try using testdisk (http://www.cgsecurity.org/wiki/TestDisk) >> to recover the missing logical partitions. I have found it very useful >> for recovering from this sort of situation and I believe testdisk is >> available through the debian packaging system. >> >> Hope this helps, >> > > I'm not sure if the Suse recovery tool was testdisk, but before I try to > restore the partition table by recovering a MBR backup, that I made > before I installed Windows, but after the IDE was partitioned I will try > anything else. > > If lost partitions are found I can check if the number and size of the > partitions is correct, because I noted that in longhand, but I didn't > not the sectors etc.. testdisk will display details of the partitions it has found and allow you to look at the partitions and files it has found before recovering them, it will also tell you if it will be able to recover them successfully or not. If they are not correct there is an option to perform a deeper scan which may find what you are looking for. testedisk is a forensic tool so you need to be careful using testdisk as it can find partitions which were long ago deleted and reformatted etc, the deeper it scans the more it will find. If you have enough free space on another drive I would suggest using dd to image the whole damaged drive before running testdisk, that way you can recover the (damaged) partitions back to how it is now if you restore the wrong partitions. You could also run testdisk on the iso image instead of the actual drive to avoid potential problems. Ross. _______________________________________________ 64studio-users mailing list [email protected] http://lists.64studio.com/mailman/listinfo/64studio-users
