18 August 2009

More on Linux Partion Rescue

The story goes that Windows's partition manager messed up my Linux partitions, to the extent that I could not see the file system on them or boot from them.

After searching online, I found instructions here and here. Whew!

Here's what I did:

I loaded Parted Magic onto my USB drive with UNetBootin. I love that utility!

Then, following the instructions from the links above, I restored the superblock on my Linux drive from a backup superblock. So my file system was back!

The bad news is that Windows's partition manager changed the designation of my primary partition containing Linux (!?!), so that install of Linux won't boot anymore. But at least I recovered my data.

17 August 2009

Anti-Microsoft?

I know, this post hardly belongs on a blog that's supposed to be about ASP.NET and the cool tools that Microsoft provides. Bear with me.

I've been working on an unrelated job, and to that end I started playing with Linux. I know, the beginning of the end, right?

How is it that Linux is so sensitive to the possibility that you might be running another OS and Windows isn't? e.g., when I use the Linux utility to edit partitions on my hard drive, it makes me go back and exit Windows properly first (last time there had been an error returning from Standby). When I use the Windows utility to remove a partition that has NOTHING to do with Linux, it messes up my bootloader so that my computer won't boot up at all. The Windows install disk got Windows up and running again, at the expense of a new little partition on which I installed a new copy of Windows, and which can be deleted at my leisure.

In my search for the right utility to get Linux going again, I discovered this little gem. Called "UNetbootin", it actually would have been extremely helpful when I was installing Linux in the first place - it's a utility that lets you install a Linux installation .iso image or other bootable utility to a hard drive partition, or a USB drive, or a floppy, or a CD. The utility I have in mind for today is Super Grub Disk, a utility that will give me all the boot options for my system, not just the Windows ones!