ext4 drive unmountable after windows install

[talormanda]

I installed windows 10 to update my bios, this was successful. After going back to Ubuntu MATE, my secondary 3TB hdd somehow gained a NTFS partition on it, and the other partition was marked as "unallocated". I deleted the NTFS partition and now I am left with a single ext4 partition that can't be mounted. I am not sure what happened or if I am able to get this mounted again to get my data off. I am new to all of this and looking for a place to start. Is it possible the partition table was simply damaged? I did not format or write to this partition when I installed windows.

[recuperation]

I installed windows 10 to update my bios, this was successful. After going back to Ubuntu MATE, my secondary 3TB hdd somehow gained a NTFS partition on it, and the other partition was marked as "unallocated". I deleted the NTFS partition and now I am left with a single ext4 partition that can't be mounted. I am not sure what happened or if I am able to get this mounted again to get my data off. I am new to all of this and looking for a place to start. Is it possible the partition table was simply damaged?

No. An additional NTFS partition is not created by a damaging operation.

A good place to start is:

https://www.cgsecurity.org/testdisk.pdf

and

https://www.cgsecurity.org/wiki/TestDisk

[cgrenier]

Run as root "fsck.ext4 /dev/sdb". What is the output ?

[talormanda]

Run as root "fsck.ext4 /dev/sdb". What is the output ?

Code: Select all

e2fsck 1.45.5 (07-Jan-2020)
3TB: clean, 89101/183148544 files, 399232435/732566646 blocks

I must also note that since this post, I deleted the NTFS partition and now it is one big partition again. It shows there is 1.2TB free, but when mounting, it is empty. If I do a "quick search" on it, I can see the files (in a folder called "lost+found"). There is also a lot of files listed in red text. Unsure what to do at this point. It looks possible to copy the files, but I have no idea how to select only what I want (unless you have to do it one by one?). Or can something be done to the files to become visible again when I mount it?

[recuperation]

Run as root "fsck.ext4 /dev/sdb". What is the output ?

Code: Select all

e2fsck 1.45.5 (07-Jan-2020)
3TB: clean, 89101/183148544 files, 399232435/732566646 blocks

I must also note that since this post, I deleted the NTFS partition and now it is one big partition again.

Another NTFS partition? There is no NTFS partition on the pics you posted. You were talking about one NTFS partition in your first posting.
[...and now it is one big partition again...] ??? And what is it?

It shows there is 1.2TB free, but when mounting, it is empty.

Please specify, what "it" is.

If I do a "quick search" on it, I can see the files (in a folder called "lost+found"). There is also a lot of files listed in red text. Unsure what to do at this point. It looks possible to copy the files, but I have no idea how to select only what I want (unless you have to do it one by one?).

If files can be recovered the keys for recovering are indicated. Did you see them?