<SOLVED> Entire hard drive corrupted

[Pythzor]

I can recall now (earlier today I'd forgotten) when Mint 12 first came out a couple of times when the OS lost Gparted in the middle of an operation. I'd have Gparted doing something that, "depending on . . . this might take a long time.' And so I'd find something else to do. Later when I went to see if Gparted was finished, I wouldn't be able to find it. The only thing I could assume was that the operation was finished and Gparted had closed on it's own, or that it had crashed. But when restarted or shutdown, I'd briefly see the missing Gparted on the screen (but too late to cancel the reboot or shut down).

Well over the months since then I made it a point not to use Gparted on Mint. But today I'd forgotten why and used Mint 12 to resize my Ubuntu home partition. After a long time (say 45 minutes or so) I went to check on Gparted and I couldn't find it. When I restarted my computer, I briefly saw the missing Gparted flash on the screen just before the OS went off.

After rebooting, Lisa's Gparted showed, the Ubuntu home partition (299 Gbs) as "unallocated." So I installed Testdisk, unearthed Ubuntu's home partition and selected "write." Testdisk said I'd have to reboot for the changes to take place. But after I rebooted, the grub error message popped up on a black screen. After booting a live cd and invoking Gparted, it showed the entire hard drive as a dismal gray and marked "unallocated."

I'm presently using a Katya live dvd. Katya's disk utility shows all the former partitions as intact and when I select "Check Filesystem: check and repair the filesystem" they're all "Clean," but Gparted still shows the hard drive as unallocated.

Here's a screenshot of the disk utility gui.

[Pythzor]

Here's another screenshot; this one of Testdisk. Testdisk is showing my partitions just as I wish they were written to disk. What do I have to do to make that happen? I need some directions here.

As always, any and all help would be very much appreciated. Thank you.

[Pythzor]

And here screenshot; the best one yet, as far as I'm concerned! It's of all my OSes under live home -- all my files are accessible. But how do I get them to boot?

[HughT]

Hi, Pythzor,
I can't explain what has happened to Gparted, but Testdisk is showing all your files, so let's assume they're all okay. If you got a grub error message, then I'm guessing that the Testdisk 'write' operation has somehow corrupted Ubuntu's boot or grub files. You were using Ubuntu's grub? You could try re-installing and repairing either Ubuntu's or Mint's grub as follows:
from a live CD

Code: Select all

sudo mount /dev/sdXY /mnt

replace X and Y with the appropriate drive and partition for Ubuntu or Mint boot, depending on your preference.

Code: Select all

sudo grub-install --root-directory=/mnt /dev/sdX

note - there's a gap between =/mnt and /dev, and no partition number after sdX.
re-boot into Ubuntu or Mint then

Code: Select all

sudo update-grub

hope this helps, regards

[Pythzor]

You could try re-installing and repairing either Ubuntu's or Mint's grub as follows:
from a live CD

Code: Select all

sudo mount /dev/sdXY /mnt

replace X and Y with the appropriate drive and partition for Ubuntu or Mint boot, depending on your preference.

Code: Select all

sudo grub-install --root-directory=/mnt /dev/sdX

note - there's a gap between =/mnt and /dev, and no partition number after sdX.
re-boot into Ubuntu or Mint then

Code: Select all

sudo update-grub

hope this helps, regards

Fantastic! Simply Fantastic. When I saw my familiar grub splash, I stood up and hollered for joy.

I sure wish I could help folks on the forums as efficaciously as people have helped me. That would help me to share my joy.

Thank you very much!