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First of all, i tried finding previous questions, didn't find anything that quite matches my case.

I have Windows 8.1 as well as Ubuntu 14.04 LTS in dual boot.

In the grub OS list at boot, I selected my acer laptop's recovery partition by mistake, didn't do the recovery obviously and quickly turned my laptop off. That, for some reason messed up grub and i was presented by the grub rescue screen. I tried the Ubuntu boot repair from a live CD and now my laptop boots straight to windows. I couldn't see my Linux partition using gparted. I tried using test disk and i was able to see my Linux partition, but i wasn't quite sure how to restore it.

How do I get back GRUB and Ubuntu, or at least how would I get my data from the hidden Linux partition?

Jens Erat
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Tao
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1 Answers1

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This is pretty off-topic here as it's a pure Windows 8 problem. Windows 8 shut down is by definition not a shutdown -h now as we know it, but a hybrid hibernate. As we're trying to rescue the Ubuntu partition, it's back on-topic again! ;-)

Basically, all your data is still there, it's just invisible, so even booting from a live CD and using gparted will not show you the partitions.

Steps to take:

  1. Stop doing recovery on the disk itself NOW.
  2. Buy an additional hard disk
  3. Add the new hard disk to the machine
  4. Boot a LiveUSB, install ddrescue

  5. Go to a terminal using 

    ddrescue --binary-prefixes --cluster-size=64 --timeout=20s /dev/sdX /dev/sdY /media/ubuntu/PathToUSB/CrashRecovery.log

    where X is the original and Y the new one

  6. Physically remove /dev/sdX from the machine
  7. Use testdisk on sdY
  8. If you make a mess of things, restore the image made in step 4 and try again from step 7
  9. Copy any rescued files to your current back-up drive (you do have have a back-up drive, don't you?) If you do not have one, read the following Q&A (you're user type 4)
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Fabby
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