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Linux is a family of open source Unix-like operating systems based on the Linux kernel, an operating system kernel first released on September 17, 1991 by Linus Torvalds. Linux is typically packaged in a Linux distribution (or distro for short).

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Broke a partition. Is there any way of saving it? (lemm.ee)

submitted 11 months ago* (last edited 11 months ago) by [email protected] to c/[email protected]

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While I was switching distros, I accidentally broke a partition. I'm almost certain that all the data is there, but it doesn't have a filesystem (I used ext4). Is there anything I can do to fix it, similar to changing the file extension without changing the contents. PS: It's a data partition. I was trying to resize it, accidentally also moved it to the left, found out that it was taking forever to move it, so I cancelled it. Finished the move to the left operation (I think), but it threw up an error about the filesystem. I don't remember what it was, though.

Thanks to everyone who suggested Testdisk. It worked almost perfectly.

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[–] [email protected] 9 points 11 months ago (1 children)

use dd and save the whole drive to a bigger drive or maybe compress it with gzip while using dd to save it to a slightly smaller one

command would be something like this:

dd if=/dev/..../myparition|gzip status=progress > /mnt/external_hd/mypartition.gzip

[–] [email protected] 6 points 11 months ago* (last edited 11 months ago) (2 children)

Wouldn't you want to use

dd if=/dev/sda3 of=/dev/sdc1 status=progress && sync

Where /dev/sda3 is the damaged partition and /dev/sdc1 is the freshly formatted external drive

You'll find your attached devices with lsblk

You're going to want to make sure /dev/sda3(broken partition) is unmounted so as not to write any more data to it.

[–] [email protected] 4 points 11 months ago* (last edited 11 months ago) (1 children)

To add on to this answer (which is correct):

Your "of" can also just be a regular file if that's easier to work with vs needing to create a new partition for the copy.

I'll also say you might want to use the block size parameter "bs=" on "dd" to speed things up, especially if you are using fast storage. Using "dd" with "bs=1G" will speed things up tremendously if you have at least >1GB of RAM.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 11 months ago

I totally spaced on BS=4M which I believe is the standard block size for ext4

[–] [email protected] 2 points 11 months ago (1 children)

this clones one parition to another which is fine if you have free partition with enough space lying around. My code was for taking compressed backup of the partition to be restored later if needed. Its less convenient but doesnt require as much space nor does it require an entire partition

[–] [email protected] 1 points 11 months ago (1 children)

Don't you have to read the partition to compress it, which is fine on a healthy partition but can further damage a broken one?

[–] [email protected] 0 points 11 months ago

depends on what you mean by "broken". If broken means has bad sector or other hardware issue, then yes OP should transfer data to healthy partition and work from there. though it certainly won't hurt if he attempted to recover data from broken partition (worst the HD dies and OP restore the backup on healthy HD) However he said "i broke my partition" which make me think its software issue, not hardware. in which case, would be faster to recover data directly after taking backup