[plug] partition recovery - stupid fdisk mistake

[Mike Holland]

philC wrote:

> In attempting to reformat a ext3 to fat partition I ran the fdisk o 
> option then the w write to disk -Big mistake! I've now got only one 

Phil,
don't turn that computer off!! :-)
Try  "cat /proc/partitions" and save/write the result. That will tell 
you their size, from which you can calculate the number of cylinders,
and rebuild the table by hand.  Also 'df' will give sizes and other
useful info.

If the computer is shut down, you can still boot off floppy or cdrom and
repair it.  If you have lost the partition sizes, there is probably
a utility which will scan the disk looking for partition headers.

I found this, but its a bit old:
http://www.ussg.iu.edu/hypermail/linux/kernel/9809.2/0709.html

But hopefully, you can write down enough info from the running system,
and manually rebuild the table with fdisk.

I don't know of any duplicate copy. I just write down the partition
numbers, types and cylinder ranges in case it gets trashed.

> Obviously I've got only one chance to rectify so all help appreciated.

Its not that bad, fortunately. Do you have a rescue disk yet?


regards, Mike.