Erased partition! Please help!

How to use TestDisk to recover lost partition
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marcellino
Posts: 1
Joined: 02 Jan 2015, 11:26

Erased partition! Please help!

#1 Post by marcellino »

Dear friends,

I am a beginner with Linux and I had a bad inspiration to try a quick dual-boot Ubuntu installation without reading properly about it first.
I found a tutorial and have installed Ubuntu on my laptop (Gateway NV56R30u) alongside pre-installed Windows 8. I have made a recovery disk first of my Windows 8 and saved it on a 8Gb USB pen drive (it used 2,6 Gb of it).
The problem is that now it starts only in Ubuntu...

Having analysing what I've done wrong I found that I've done a huge mistake with partitioning.... I have a 1TB HDD, which I have split as follows: 50 GB for Ubuntu and the remaining amount of space I have split in half: one half for Home and another half for Swap drive...I believe I am the only idiot on this planet who have ever done this... This is how my partitions look now: http://i.imgur.com/XXOQlmzl.jpg

Now I don't know what to do, as I have a few questions I don't have an answer...

Let's say I could use the recovery drive to backup Windows, but I've got these questions, which may look stupid and I would appreciate some good answers:

1. How bad can affect my data from HDD my "genious" way to do the partitioning? Is it reversible?
2. Considering the way I have done the partitioning, if I decide to use recovery drive to repair Windows, what are my chances to have a good result,without loosing all my data? But honestly...I thing it's an illusion...

Trying to answer myself to those questions I have searched lots of forums, including here and I realized that the app TestDisk may help me to figure out if I have messed up my hard disk. After using TestDisk and Photorec I've got some results (you can see them here: http://imgur.com/a/2ye1V#0 ), but I don't really know how to interpret them... There is a testdisk log file below as well with my "masterpiece work"... :(

So, I would appreciate some advice in solving this mess I've done...

Is there any chance for me to recover the data and How I should do this?

I hope you will not tell me to ask google, as I have already did that and no other problem was as spooky as mine...
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golimar
Posts: 7
Joined: 12 Jan 2015, 12:01

Re: Erased partition! Please help!

#2 Post by golimar »

What is that fat32 partition that I see in the screenshot? (sda4)
What kind of Windows recovery disk did you create? Does it contain only data or is it a full clone of the Windows partition?

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