All partitions are lost?

[zami]

I have a 160 GB disk with 80GB of it used (mainly Mint, with a 15 GB partition with openSuse, used for experimenting). I've decided to use the extra 80 GB for XP, and tried to install it today. I've tried to use the XP's setup to format the unallocated 80 GB as NTFS, but after the format there was an error, saying something like 'unusable disk'.

It wasn't a pleasant message to receive, but since I don't need windows at the moment, I've decided to leave it alone, and maybe in the future create the partition for windows in advanced, using GParted, and try again. I've used the live CD to repair the grub, and boot into my Mint.

I've used the partition editor in Mint to try and see what's wrong with the 80 GB partition, and then I was terrified to find out that I have no partitions, and all of my disk is unallocated.

What happened to my partitions? How come I have no partitions but a working Mint OS? How can I save my disk/data/os?

[Husse]

How come I have no partitions but a working Mint OS?

You can't
Don't do anything!!! It's working
What might have happened is that the partitions somehow were "hidden"
Gparted has the ability to set a "hidden" flag
Perhaps this can be unselected for the entire disk (you find it under Manage flags)
BE EXTREMELY CAREFUL Don't do anything unless you are certain it is not dangerous

[zami]

The "Manage flags" option is grayed out. The only options I have are New and Information (which gives "Filesystem: unallocated", Size and first/last/total sectors).

[Husse]

I know Gparted has it's flaws and I had a situation when it could not see a FAT partition
First off - it works, you may not have to do anything until a change in the partition structure is needed.
Second - CAREFUL this is one of the few cases when you can do real (major) harm
Install testdisk a wonderful program found in Synaptic
Use it to analyze your disk - it can do that and perhaps suggest a solution
Think more than twice before you get into action and you are welcome to ask for more help

[zami]

I guess I was lucky, my reckless behavior saved my disk this time

I've used testdisk and it was able to read my partitions correctly, including the new NTFS partition created by XP. Before quiting, there is an option to write partition structure to disk, which I did, and now everything seems to be ok. I hope this will last.

Thanks for the help.

[Husse]

Backup is a good thing
USB disks are cheap now - I bought one for the equivalent of about 60 Euro it's even powered by USB and is 160 GB
I have a CD with Acronis and make complete backups every two or three days
Then you don't risk a nervous breakdown when things like this happens