Deleted files after installing Ubuntu

Question

I installed Ubuntu on my laptop over the windows, I had 2 partitions on one hard disk. It seems like old partition is gone with all my files (photos, music, etc.). How can I recover old files. Files weren't on same partition as windows.

Answer 1

It is unlikely that your other partition is actually deleted, and much more likely that it is simply not mounted in Ubuntu. Unlike Windows, where partitions are given a drive letter automatically in almost all cases, Linux typically leaves them unmounted/disconnected.

Find the missing partition by running:

sudo fdisk -l

This will list all of the partitions on the machine, you just need to find the one that is not mounted. To see a list of already mounted partitions, run:

sudo mount

Now all you need to do is mount the drive to a folder, and the contents will be available there. Replace /dev/sda2 with the device of your partition. It will be the one which shows up in fdisk -l, but not in mount.

sudo mkdir /mnt/spare_partition
sudo mount /dev/sda2 /mnt/spare_partition

If the files really are deleted, there is a way to get at least some of them back, but we can discuss that after you rule out the obvious problem first!