[resolved]reading dos partitions[formatted]

[sandpounder]

I have three drives at the moment, 2 ssd's and a hdd.

I'm gearing up for an update in the next few months from 19 to likely 21, and while poking around discovered two remnants of a past life.

I expect it's from windows 7, but I haven't used it for a good long time now. Is there some way to peek under that rug? I did try running 7 from the grub menu, but got an error message.

As always, thank you for your time.

[autodctr]

Later Win7 started that silliness with locking files when "shutting down". Don't know if that is causing the problem or not. If it is, then the only thing that you can try is to mount the drive on a Win7 (or later) and then shut it down w/o fast boot being turned on.

[linux-rox]

Is there some way to peek under that rug?

Linux can mount and read most Windows formats, so the fact GParted regards it as unknown probably means the partition has been corrupted. You could try running TestDisk on it. Will export to a USB drive, so it's a non-destructive procedure. I've never used, but there's lots of info on the internet.

Edit: If you're keen to look at it in Win7, you could try installing that in VirtualBox. A lot of work, though, if you're not already familiar with VBox.

[sandpounder]

Linux can mount and read most Windows formats, so the fact GParted regards it as unknown probably means the partition has been corrupted...

That was one thought I had, but I was dismissive when I thought it because it's two partitions. I figured the odds favored something I wouldn't think of.
I'm not familiar with VirtualBox. At first blush it seems it wants the rest of my weekend, so hard no on that front, at least for now.

I'm going to let this topic simmer a bit through the weekend, maybe something good happens with some more free time.

[sandpounder]

...the fact GParted regards it as unknown probably means the partition has been corrupted...

Stepping slightly left of question here, suppose you had a corrupt partition or two on a well traveled, long loved HDD, would you trust that enough to park some backups while you, say, upgraded from Mint 19 to Mint 21? I'm expecting the software is broken and it's not sectors degrading? Maybe I'm being to hopeful.

[AndyMH]

sda1 looks like it might have been an EFI partition, sda2 - bitlocker?

[sandpounder]

...sda2 - bitlocker?

I had to look that up. Few things are 100% but I'm really sure I didn't do that.

Second thing after coffee in the morning I'm just biting the bullet as it were, and having a go with gparted. We'll see.

[linux-rox]

Stepping slightly left of question here, suppose you had a corrupt partition or two on a well traveled, long loved HDD, would you trust that enough to park some backups while you, say, upgraded from Mint 19 to Mint 21?

Would I trust it with the only copy? No. As the backup-backup, probably yes. Assuming of course the drive hasn't otherwise been acting up.

I'm not familiar with VirtualBox.

Then that suggestion should be a "hard no." BTW, on further consideration, occurs to me the VBox strategy would be a little more difficult than I implied, as the partition would have to be duped to a USB drive to have even a chance of reading it in VBox. And no assurance it would work.

[linux-rox]

sda1 looks like it might have been an EFI partition

Nah, it was a boot partition, of course, but BIOS not UEFI. Notice there's no esp flag.

Further, here's what a healthy Win7 partition table looks like to Linux. This is a VBox VM with almost nothing installed.

[mikeflan]

I'm just biting the bullet as it were, and having a go with gparted.

Yeah, I would try to recover that partition also. If the data meant anything to me it would be in my backups.
Here is another NTFS partition to look at. This one works fine:
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