My laptop battery died and the machine did a hard shutdown. When I rebooted I got the message "no bootable drive found".
My setup is a 250GB SSD with the filesystem and home directory with a secondary 500GB SSD for storage. The main drive is Ubuntu 22.04 LTS with LUKS encryption.
When I boot up a live USB (Ubuntu) I can see the main drive (sda) but it should have partitions and they are not listed with lsblk. The drive itself is not listed with blkid and it seems the labels and UUID for the disk are gone.
I cloned the disk to a 480GB SSD using dd, which is what I am working on fixing to keep the original untouched.
I have tried mounting in various ways and using fsck. I did a quickscan and deeper scan with testdisk last night and nothing was showing up so I tried to force e2fsck, but that just erased the disk. I re-cloned the drive over night.
I decided to try PhotoRec, as suggested by another post here when there are no partitions listed. When I did that I could see files, but I don't think trying to recover them will work since the drive is encrypted. After that I tried testdisk again and now a single partition shows up. Log can be seen here: https://pastebin.com/mhLzsJ54
Is there any hope for restoring my partition table and/or retrieving my files?
I have another machine set up with Ubuntu + LUKS, is there a way I can use the partition table there and clone it to my main laptop or will the tables be completely different (I should say I have a very, very rudimentary understanding of blocks)?
Is there anything else I can try?
Any and all suggestions, info, links, docs etc are greatly, greatly appreciated. Thank you for taking the time to even look at this post
Partition table missing after hard reset (Ubuntu LUKS)
Forum rules
When asking for technical support:
- Search for posts on the same topic before posting a new question.
- Give clear, specific information in the title of your post.
- Include as many details as you can, MOST POSTS WILL GET ONLY ONE OR TWO ANSWERS.
- Post a follow up with a "Thank you" or "This worked!"
- When you learn something, use that knowledge to HELP ANOTHER USER LATER.
Before posting, please read https://www.cgsecurity.org/testdisk.pdf
When asking for technical support:
- Search for posts on the same topic before posting a new question.
- Give clear, specific information in the title of your post.
- Include as many details as you can, MOST POSTS WILL GET ONLY ONE OR TWO ANSWERS.
- Post a follow up with a "Thank you" or "This worked!"
- When you learn something, use that knowledge to HELP ANOTHER USER LATER.
Before posting, please read https://www.cgsecurity.org/testdisk.pdf
Re: Partition table missing after hard reset (Ubuntu LUKS)
Which drive is your "main drive"? I don't understand which drive you want to recover.My setup is a 250GB SSD with the filesystem and home directory with a secondary 500GB SSD for storage. The main drive is Ubuntu 22.04 LTS with LUKS encryption.
No, the LUKS header will be different and have different encryption key. Everything will be different.I have another machine set up with Ubuntu + LUKS, is there a way I can use the partition table there and clone it to my main laptop
-
recuperation
- Posts: 3026
- Joined: 04 Jan 2019, 09:48
- Location: Hannover, Deutschland (Germany, Allemagne)
Re: Partition table missing after hard reset (Ubuntu LUKS)
I can't see your partitions either. Wouldn't it be a good idea to describe those partitions?osttso wrote: 22 Oct 2022, 16:41 My laptop battery died and the machine did a hard shutdown. When I rebooted I got the message "no bootable drive found".
My setup is a 250GB SSD with the filesystem and home directory with a secondary 500GB SSD for storage. The main drive is Ubuntu 22.04 LTS with LUKS encryption.
When I boot up a live USB (Ubuntu) I can see the main drive (sda) but it should have partitions and they are not listed with lsblk.
Are you talking about a disk or a partition? The term "drive" is confusing.
The drive itself is not listed with blkid and it seems the labels and UUID for the disk are gone.
Which disk did you clone?
I cloned the disk to a 480GB SSD using dd, which is what I am working on fixing to keep the original untouched.
Mounting an encrypted disk or partition is not possible in various ways when encryption comes into play
I have tried mounting in various ways
You cannot do a file system check on an encrypted disk or partition because it is not readable because it is encrypted.and using fsck
You did not describe your LUKS setup. There is no way for me to judge if the one partition found is a good result.. I did a quickscan and deeper scan with testdisk last night and nothing was showing up so I tried to force e2fsck, but that just erased the disk. I re-cloned the drive over night.
Right now I don't see any hope.
I decided to try PhotoRec, as suggested by another post here when there are no partitions listed. When I did that I could see files, but I don't think trying to recover them will work since the drive is encrypted. After that I tried testdisk again and now a single partition shows up. Log can be seen here: https://pastebin.com/mhLzsJ54
Is there any hope for restoring my partition table and/or retrieving my files?
Delivering a precise description. Technically your case is a black box for me despite your description. I guess that your other machine is set up the same way as the broken one. You could even reinstall your system on a new disk the same way you installed your broken one to find out how your system is like in terms of partitions.
I have another machine set up with Ubuntu + LUKS, is there a way I can use the partition table there and clone it to my main laptop or will the tables be completely different (I should say I have a very, very rudimentary understanding of blocks)?
Is there anything else I can try?
Uploading pictures and log files to this site keeps your case readable for others. Third party hosting may disappear.
Code: Select all
Sat Oct 22 14:56:44 2022
Command line: TestDisk
TestDisk 7.1, Data Recovery Utility, July 2019
Christophe GRENIER <grenier@cgsecurity.org>
https://www.cgsecurity.org
OS: Linux, kernel 5.4.0-42-generic (#46-Ubuntu SMP Fri Jul 10 00:24:02 UTC 2020) x86_64
Compiler: GCC 9.2
ext2fs lib: 1.45.5, ntfs lib: libntfs-3g, reiserfs lib: none, ewf lib: none, curses lib: ncurses 6.1
/dev/sda: LBA, HPA, LBA48 support
/dev/sda: size 937703088 sectors
/dev/sda: user_max 937703088 sectors
/dev/sda: native_max 937703088 sectors
Warning: can't get size for Disk /dev/mapper/control - 0 B - 0 sectors, sector size=512
Warning: can't get size for Disk /dev/loop6 - 0 B - 0 sectors, sector size=512
Warning: can't get size for Disk /dev/loop7 - 0 B - 0 sectors, sector size=512
Hard disk list
Disk /dev/sda - 480 GB / 447 GiB - CHS 58369 255 63, sector size=512 - KINGSTON SA400S37480G, S/N:50026B7784CA934A, FW:SBFKB1H5
Disk /dev/sdb - 8100 MB / 7725 MiB - CHS 1020 250 62, sector size=512 - Sony Storage Media, FW:0100
Disk /dev/loop0 - 2103 MB / 2006 MiB - 4108672 sectors (RO), sector size=512
Disk /dev/loop1 - 31 MB / 29 MiB - 61200 sectors (RO), sector size=512
Disk /dev/loop2 - 57 MB / 54 MiB - 112552 sectors (RO), sector size=512
Disk /dev/loop3 - 267 MB / 255 MiB - 523400 sectors (RO), sector size=512
Disk /dev/loop4 - 65 MB / 62 MiB - 127160 sectors (RO), sector size=512
Disk /dev/loop5 - 52 MB / 49 MiB - 101960 sectors (RO), sector size=512
Partition table type defaults to Intel
Disk /dev/sda - 480 GB / 447 GiB - KINGSTON SA400S37480G
Partition table type: Intel
Analyse Disk /dev/sda - 480 GB / 447 GiB - CHS 58369 255 63
Current partition structure:
Partition sector doesn't have the endmark 0xAA55
search_part()
Disk /dev/sda - 480 GB / 447 GiB - CHS 58369 255 63
block_group_nr 2187
recover_EXT2: "e2fsck -b 71663616 -B 4096 device" may be needed
recover_EXT2: s_block_group_nr=2187/3577, s_mnt_count=0/4294967295, s_blocks_per_group=32768, s_inodes_per_group=8192
recover_EXT2: s_blocksize=4096
recover_EXT2: s_blocks_count 117212886
recover_EXT2: part_size 937703088
Filesystem created: Sat Oct 22 01:16:57 2022
Linux 0 0 1 58369 80 63 937703088 [ffs]
ext4 blocksize=4096 Large_file Sparse_SB Backup_SB, 480 GB / 447 GiB
Partition not added.
block_group_nr 2187
recover_EXT2: "e2fsck -b 71663616 -B 4096 device" may be needed
recover_EXT2: s_block_group_nr=2187/3577, s_mnt_count=0/4294967295, s_blocks_per_group=32768, s_inodes_per_group=8192
recover_EXT2: s_blocksize=4096
recover_EXT2: s_blocks_count 117212416
recover_EXT2: part_size 937699328
Filesystem created: Sat Oct 22 04:05:22 2022
Linux 0 32 33 58369 53 52 937699328
ext4 blocksize=4096 Large_file Sparse_SB Backup_SB, 480 GB / 447 GiB
Results
* Linux 0 32 33 58369 53 52 937699328
ext4 blocksize=4096 Large_file Sparse_SB Backup_SB, 480 GB / 447 GiB
Hint for advanced users: dmsetup may be used if you prefer to avoid rewriting the partition table for the moment:
echo "0 937699328 linear /dev/sda 2048" | dmsetup create test0
interface_write()
1 * Linux 0 32 33 58369 53 52 937699328
search_part()
Disk /dev/sda - 480 GB / 447 GiB - CHS 58369 255 63
block_group_nr 2187
recover_EXT2: "e2fsck -b 71663616 -B 4096 device" may be needed
recover_EXT2: s_block_group_nr=2187/3577, s_mnt_count=0/4294967295, s_blocks_per_group=32768, s_inodes_per_group=8192
recover_EXT2: s_blocksize=4096
recover_EXT2: s_blocks_count 117212886
recover_EXT2: part_size 937703088
Filesystem created: Sat Oct 22 01:16:57 2022
Linux 0 0 1 58369 80 63 937703088 [ffs]
ext4 blocksize=4096 Large_file Sparse_SB Backup_SB, 480 GB / 447 GiB
Partition not added.
block_group_nr 2187
recover_EXT2: "e2fsck -b 71663616 -B 4096 device" may be needed
recover_EXT2: s_block_group_nr=2187/3577, s_mnt_count=0/4294967295, s_blocks_per_group=32768, s_inodes_per_group=8192
recover_EXT2: s_blocksize=4096
recover_EXT2: s_blocks_count 117212416
recover_EXT2: part_size 937699328
Filesystem created: Sat Oct 22 04:05:22 2022
Linux 0 32 33 58369 53 52 937699328
ext4 blocksize=4096 Large_file Sparse_SB Backup_SB, 480 GB / 447 GiB
block_group_nr 2401
recover_EXT2: "e2fsck -b 78675968 -B 4096 device" may be needed
recover_EXT2: s_block_group_nr=2401/3577, s_mnt_count=0/4294967295, s_blocks_per_group=32768, s_inodes_per_group=8192
recover_EXT2: s_blocksize=4096
recover_EXT2: s_blocks_count 117212886
recover_EXT2: part_size 937703088
Filesystem created: Sat Oct 22 01:16:57 2022
Linux 0 0 1 58369 80 63 937703088 [ffs]
ext4 blocksize=4096 Large_file Sparse_SB Backup_SB, 480 GB / 447 GiB
Partition not added.
block_group_nr 2401
recover_EXT2: "e2fsck -b 78675968 -B 4096 device" may be needed
recover_EXT2: s_block_group_nr=2401/3577, s_mnt_count=0/4294967295, s_blocks_per_group=32768, s_inodes_per_group=8192
recover_EXT2: s_blocksize=4096
recover_EXT2: s_blocks_count 117212416
recover_EXT2: part_size 937699328
Filesystem created: Sat Oct 22 04:05:22 2022
Linux 0 32 33 58369 53 52 937699328
ext4 blocksize=4096 Large_file Sparse_SB Backup_SB, 480 GB / 447 GiB
block_group_nr 3125
recover_EXT2: "e2fsck -b 102400000 -B 4096 device" may be needed
recover_EXT2: s_block_group_nr=3125/3577, s_mnt_count=0/4294967295, s_blocks_per_group=32768, s_inodes_per_group=8192
recover_EXT2: s_blocksize=4096
recover_EXT2: s_blocks_count 117212886
recover_EXT2: part_size 937703088
Filesystem created: Sat Oct 22 01:16:57 2022
Linux 0 0 1 58369 80 63 937703088 [ffs]
ext4 blocksize=4096 Large_file Sparse_SB Backup_SB, 480 GB / 447 GiB
Partition not added.
block_group_nr 3125
recover_EXT2: "e2fsck -b 102400000 -B 4096 device" may be needed
recover_EXT2: s_block_group_nr=3125/3577, s_mnt_count=0/4294967295, s_blocks_per_group=32768, s_inodes_per_group=8192
recover_EXT2: s_blocksize=4096
recover_EXT2: s_blocks_count 117212416
recover_EXT2: part_size 937699328
Filesystem created: Sat Oct 22 04:05:22 2022
Linux 0 32 33 58369 53 52 937699328
ext4 blocksize=4096 Large_file Sparse_SB Backup_SB, 480 GB / 447 GiB
Results
* Linux 0 32 33 58369 53 52 937699328
ext4 blocksize=4096 Large_file Sparse_SB Backup_SB, 480 GB / 447 GiB
Hint for advanced users: dmsetup may be used if you prefer to avoid rewriting the partition table for the moment:
echo "0 937699328 linear /dev/sda 2048" | dmsetup create test0Re: Partition table missing after hard reset (Ubuntu LUKS)
That makes sense. Thankskarenmcd wrote: 23 Oct 2022, 03:17Which drive is your "main drive"? I don't understand which drive you want to recover.My setup is a 250GB SSD with the filesystem and home directory with a secondary 500GB SSD for storage. The main drive is Ubuntu 22.04 LTS with LUKS encryption.
Sorry, by main drive I mean the 250GB SSD with the filesystem set up with Ubuntu + LUKS. That is the drive I'm trying to rescue.
No, the LUKS header will be different and have different encryption key. Everything will be different.I have another machine set up with Ubuntu + LUKS, is there a way I can use the partition table there and clone it to my main laptop
Re: Partition table missing after hard reset (Ubuntu LUKS)
Edit: I messed up all the quoting. Sorry, I'm a bit of a forum n00b
recuperation wrote: 23 Oct 2022, 11:51I can't see your partitions either. Wouldn't it be a good idea to describe those partitions?osttso wrote: 22 Oct 2022, 16:41
Thank you for taking the time to get back to me. Sorry for my convoluted language regarding partitions, drives, and disks. I mix them up sometimes
Are you talking about a disk or a partition? The term "drive" is confusing.
I have attached an image of what the partitions should look like. The image is from another laptop that is setup the exact same as the one with the broken SSD. The only difference is the one I am trying to rescue is 250GB
The basic setup should look something like this:
Again, thats from my backup laptop that I believe is set up the same way.Code: Select all
sda 8:0 0 298.1G 0 disk ├─sda1 8:1 0 487M 0 part /boot ├─sda2 8:2 0 1K 0 part └─sda5 8:5 0 297.6G 0 part └─sda5_crypt 253:0 0 297.6G 0 crypt ├─ubuntu--vg-root │ 253:1 0 294.8G 0 lvm /
The drive itself is not listed with blkid and it seems the labels and UUID for the disk are gone.Which disk did you clone?
In this case I'm talking about the main partition, I believe. In the above example sda. If I run lsblk sda is listed but with no partitions (eg sda1, sda2 etc)
I cloned the disk to a 480GB SSD using dd, which is what I am working on fixing to keep the original untouched.Mounting an encrypted disk or partition is not possible in various ways when encryption comes into play
I cloned the disk I'm trying to recover
I have tried mounting in various waysYou cannot do a file system check on an encrypted disk or partition because it is not readable because it is encrypted.and using fsckYou did not describe your LUKS setup. There is no way for me to judge if the one partition found is a good result.. I did a quickscan and deeper scan with testdisk last night and nothing was showing up so I tried to force e2fsck, but that just erased the disk. I re-cloned the drive over night.Right now I don't see any hope.
Photo attached and diagram above. Hopefully that is enough. If there is something better I can provide let me know.
I decided to try PhotoRec, as suggested by another post here when there are no partitions listed. When I did that I could see files, but I don't think trying to recover them will work since the drive is encrypted. After that I tried testdisk again and now a single partition shows up. Log can be seen here: https://pastebin.com/mhLzsJ54
Is there any hope for restoring my partition table and/or retrieving my files?Delivering a precise description. Technically your case is a black box for me despite your description. I guess that your other machine is set up the same way as the broken one. You could even reinstall your system on a new disk the same way you installed your broken one to find out how your system is like in terms of partitions.
This was my worry too. Lukily all of my work was stored on my extra SSD. There are a few things I'd still like to get from the old one if possible
Is there anything else I can try?
Uploading pictures and log files to this site keeps your case readable for others. Third party hosting may disappear.
I just noticed the upoad tab and will use that moving forward
- Screenshot from 2022-10-26 17-26-02.png (59.91 KiB) Viewed 2527 times
Code: Select all
Sat Oct 22 14:56:44 2022 Command line: TestDisk TestDisk 7.1, Data Recovery Utility, July 2019 Christophe GRENIER <grenier@cgsecurity.org> https://www.cgsecurity.org OS: Linux, kernel 5.4.0-42-generic (#46-Ubuntu SMP Fri Jul 10 00:24:02 UTC 2020) x86_64 Compiler: GCC 9.2 ext2fs lib: 1.45.5, ntfs lib: libntfs-3g, reiserfs lib: none, ewf lib: none, curses lib: ncurses 6.1 /dev/sda: LBA, HPA, LBA48 support /dev/sda: size 937703088 sectors /dev/sda: user_max 937703088 sectors /dev/sda: native_max 937703088 sectors Warning: can't get size for Disk /dev/mapper/control - 0 B - 0 sectors, sector size=512 Warning: can't get size for Disk /dev/loop6 - 0 B - 0 sectors, sector size=512 Warning: can't get size for Disk /dev/loop7 - 0 B - 0 sectors, sector size=512 Hard disk list Disk /dev/sda - 480 GB / 447 GiB - CHS 58369 255 63, sector size=512 - KINGSTON SA400S37480G, S/N:50026B7784CA934A, FW:SBFKB1H5 Disk /dev/sdb - 8100 MB / 7725 MiB - CHS 1020 250 62, sector size=512 - Sony Storage Media, FW:0100 Disk /dev/loop0 - 2103 MB / 2006 MiB - 4108672 sectors (RO), sector size=512 Disk /dev/loop1 - 31 MB / 29 MiB - 61200 sectors (RO), sector size=512 Disk /dev/loop2 - 57 MB / 54 MiB - 112552 sectors (RO), sector size=512 Disk /dev/loop3 - 267 MB / 255 MiB - 523400 sectors (RO), sector size=512 Disk /dev/loop4 - 65 MB / 62 MiB - 127160 sectors (RO), sector size=512 Disk /dev/loop5 - 52 MB / 49 MiB - 101960 sectors (RO), sector size=512 Partition table type defaults to Intel Disk /dev/sda - 480 GB / 447 GiB - KINGSTON SA400S37480G Partition table type: Intel Analyse Disk /dev/sda - 480 GB / 447 GiB - CHS 58369 255 63 Current partition structure: Partition sector doesn't have the endmark 0xAA55 search_part() Disk /dev/sda - 480 GB / 447 GiB - CHS 58369 255 63 block_group_nr 2187 recover_EXT2: "e2fsck -b 71663616 -B 4096 device" may be needed recover_EXT2: s_block_group_nr=2187/3577, s_mnt_count=0/4294967295, s_blocks_per_group=32768, s_inodes_per_group=8192 recover_EXT2: s_blocksize=4096 recover_EXT2: s_blocks_count 117212886 recover_EXT2: part_size 937703088 Filesystem created: Sat Oct 22 01:16:57 2022 Linux 0 0 1 58369 80 63 937703088 [ffs] ext4 blocksize=4096 Large_file Sparse_SB Backup_SB, 480 GB / 447 GiB Partition not added. block_group_nr 2187 recover_EXT2: "e2fsck -b 71663616 -B 4096 device" may be needed recover_EXT2: s_block_group_nr=2187/3577, s_mnt_count=0/4294967295, s_blocks_per_group=32768, s_inodes_per_group=8192 recover_EXT2: s_blocksize=4096 recover_EXT2: s_blocks_count 117212416 recover_EXT2: part_size 937699328 Filesystem created: Sat Oct 22 04:05:22 2022 Linux 0 32 33 58369 53 52 937699328 ext4 blocksize=4096 Large_file Sparse_SB Backup_SB, 480 GB / 447 GiB Results * Linux 0 32 33 58369 53 52 937699328 ext4 blocksize=4096 Large_file Sparse_SB Backup_SB, 480 GB / 447 GiB Hint for advanced users: dmsetup may be used if you prefer to avoid rewriting the partition table for the moment: echo "0 937699328 linear /dev/sda 2048" | dmsetup create test0 interface_write() 1 * Linux 0 32 33 58369 53 52 937699328 search_part() Disk /dev/sda - 480 GB / 447 GiB - CHS 58369 255 63 block_group_nr 2187 recover_EXT2: "e2fsck -b 71663616 -B 4096 device" may be needed recover_EXT2: s_block_group_nr=2187/3577, s_mnt_count=0/4294967295, s_blocks_per_group=32768, s_inodes_per_group=8192 recover_EXT2: s_blocksize=4096 recover_EXT2: s_blocks_count 117212886 recover_EXT2: part_size 937703088 Filesystem created: Sat Oct 22 01:16:57 2022 Linux 0 0 1 58369 80 63 937703088 [ffs] ext4 blocksize=4096 Large_file Sparse_SB Backup_SB, 480 GB / 447 GiB Partition not added. block_group_nr 2187 recover_EXT2: "e2fsck -b 71663616 -B 4096 device" may be needed recover_EXT2: s_block_group_nr=2187/3577, s_mnt_count=0/4294967295, s_blocks_per_group=32768, s_inodes_per_group=8192 recover_EXT2: s_blocksize=4096 recover_EXT2: s_blocks_count 117212416 recover_EXT2: part_size 937699328 Filesystem created: Sat Oct 22 04:05:22 2022 Linux 0 32 33 58369 53 52 937699328 ext4 blocksize=4096 Large_file Sparse_SB Backup_SB, 480 GB / 447 GiB block_group_nr 2401 recover_EXT2: "e2fsck -b 78675968 -B 4096 device" may be needed recover_EXT2: s_block_group_nr=2401/3577, s_mnt_count=0/4294967295, s_blocks_per_group=32768, s_inodes_per_group=8192 recover_EXT2: s_blocksize=4096 recover_EXT2: s_blocks_count 117212886 recover_EXT2: part_size 937703088 Filesystem created: Sat Oct 22 01:16:57 2022 Linux 0 0 1 58369 80 63 937703088 [ffs] ext4 blocksize=4096 Large_file Sparse_SB Backup_SB, 480 GB / 447 GiB Partition not added. block_group_nr 2401 recover_EXT2: "e2fsck -b 78675968 -B 4096 device" may be needed recover_EXT2: s_block_group_nr=2401/3577, s_mnt_count=0/4294967295, s_blocks_per_group=32768, s_inodes_per_group=8192 recover_EXT2: s_blocksize=4096 recover_EXT2: s_blocks_count 117212416 recover_EXT2: part_size 937699328 Filesystem created: Sat Oct 22 04:05:22 2022 Linux 0 32 33 58369 53 52 937699328 ext4 blocksize=4096 Large_file Sparse_SB Backup_SB, 480 GB / 447 GiB block_group_nr 3125 recover_EXT2: "e2fsck -b 102400000 -B 4096 device" may be needed recover_EXT2: s_block_group_nr=3125/3577, s_mnt_count=0/4294967295, s_blocks_per_group=32768, s_inodes_per_group=8192 recover_EXT2: s_blocksize=4096 recover_EXT2: s_blocks_count 117212886 recover_EXT2: part_size 937703088 Filesystem created: Sat Oct 22 01:16:57 2022 Linux 0 0 1 58369 80 63 937703088 [ffs] ext4 blocksize=4096 Large_file Sparse_SB Backup_SB, 480 GB / 447 GiB Partition not added. block_group_nr 3125 recover_EXT2: "e2fsck -b 102400000 -B 4096 device" may be needed recover_EXT2: s_block_group_nr=3125/3577, s_mnt_count=0/4294967295, s_blocks_per_group=32768, s_inodes_per_group=8192 recover_EXT2: s_blocksize=4096 recover_EXT2: s_blocks_count 117212416 recover_EXT2: part_size 937699328 Filesystem created: Sat Oct 22 04:05:22 2022 Linux 0 32 33 58369 53 52 937699328 ext4 blocksize=4096 Large_file Sparse_SB Backup_SB, 480 GB / 447 GiB Results * Linux 0 32 33 58369 53 52 937699328 ext4 blocksize=4096 Large_file Sparse_SB Backup_SB, 480 GB / 447 GiB Hint for advanced users: dmsetup may be used if you prefer to avoid rewriting the partition table for the moment: echo "0 937699328 linear /dev/sda 2048" | dmsetup create test0