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I had Ubuntu only on my laptop for a couple of months which was running well but due to some university's applications, I had to install Windows too so I installed Windows 10 on partition 4 & then installed fresh Ubuntu 16.04 installation on Partition 1. Here is how my partition tables looks like:

There are 3 LVs on a single PV, 1st for root linux partition (Partition 1), 2nd for data (Partition 2) mounted at /var/lib/libvirt/images as I use it for virtual machines as well & 3rd for Swap (Partition 3). Partition 4 is out of that PV which I left when I was partitioning my laptop in start as I knew I would need Windows installation someday & this partition is where I installed Windows 10.

Now the issue is that, after I installed Ubuntu Partition 2 (mounted at /var/lib/libvirt/images) is totally blank even though I didn't touch it during the installation & just formatted Partition 1. Does any of you have any idea of what had happened & have any suggestion on how can I recover that data back? That LVM is on same sectors & I haven't overwritten anything there so I guess I will be able to recover it without any issues.

Will really appreciate help.

Thank you

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  • Can you add some visual details of how your partition table looks? What does this command show: lsblk -o name,mountpoint,label,size,uuid,fstype? Sep 11, 2016 at 14:53
  • @L.D.James Thank you for the reply, here it is: gist.githubusercontent.com/anonymous/… Had to make gist as character limit wasn't enough. Sep 11, 2016 at 15:22
  • I put a formatted description of the steps in my answer. Sep 11, 2016 at 17:43

2 Answers 2

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If Ubuntu was reinstalled to the first partition following Windows 10 installation than your VBR (volume boot record) \ PBR (Partition Boot Record) and BPB (Boot Parameter Block) are changed. Pointers or references to the previously known 2d logical partition need to be reestablished. I suggest using Test Disk to search for partition. It will find it but it might find other previous partitioning artifacts. There will be a set of choices of which partitions are Boot (*) Primary (P) Logical (L) and Deleted (D). Choose the ones that correlate with your previous set and then write partition info to disk and reboot. Test Disk from CGSecurity it is open source and works fantastic. Other proprietary partition software tend to give many false positives and not as logical in workflow.

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Load Ubuntu's Disk Manager. Type disk in the Launch search button.

From there you should see all your drives and partitions. Below each partition is three icons.

Icon #1: either a square or rectangle.

The rectangle is the option to mount the partition. The Square is the option to unmount the partition. When you mount it you will see a Link in the Contents section (text below) that says Mounted at. Click on the link and the mounted partition should open up.

Icon #2: A minus sign.

This is the option to delete the partition

Icon #3: A gear control.

This is the option to process the partition such as formatting.

The one you're interested in is the Icon #1. Check each partition to locate your data.

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  • I know that very well & even I am pretty much familiar with adding entries by hand in /etc/fstab to mount the partition but the reason I asked this question is that the partition doesn't have my data. Sep 12, 2016 at 3:06
  • I wasn't trying to assume what you knew. I just wanted to ensure that you would fine the specific partition by name, ensure it was mounted. The next step was to analyze the mount. Also going through the fine steps would help to identify what has happened. I understand you've said the only thing you did was to install Ubuntu on a separate partition. Done only that would not have removed the data. Something else is in the mix of which it was my intentions to get at this something else. Sep 12, 2016 at 6:32

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