Vista install busted my partition table
So I can’t say for sure what happened, but I think I know. This is my story of how installing Vista lost my data partition. Read on if you care.
Over lunch I was going to start the Vista migration thing on my laptop. I have 2 partitions for operating systems, and one big one for data. I usually run part linux (suse or ubuntu) and part windows.
So, here is what I did.
I remove a 30GB ext3 and a 2GB swap partition in windows xp disk manager. Now I have – in order:
* 30GB NTFS
* 32GB Free Space
* 90GB or so FAT32.
I think they are all primary partitions (Can’t say for sure anymore).
Now I install Vista. Tell it to install to the free space. This was the middle clicky click option, saying something about 32GB and free space. I double checked it. I was never asked anything about partitions or filesystems, just this generic mix of where to install.
Vista finishes, rock on….where is my 90GB FAT32 partition? Gone, lost, now showing free space.
I mucked around in fdisk & qtparted in knoppix. I didn’t get the partition back (at least with my files on it). Probably because I never documented the partition table and I was only guessing at starting cylinder numbers. Vista was showing 32.01GB partition, so it may or may not be slightly bigger than 32GB. I gave up and just copied my data back from elsewhere.
After Vista installed, I now had an extended partition with only the Vista 32GB logical partition in it. This is a 130GB extended partion starting where the XP partition ends until the end of the disk. The first XP partition is still good. I am assuming the Vista installer clobbered the rest of the disk just to add the extended. I REALLY don’t remember it asking accept or deny.
So, backup your stuff and use knoppix and qtparted for partioning.