A few year ago I built myself a NAS. It has a 320GB HDD for ubuntu OS and a 2TB HDD for files. I mounted de 2TB disk and shared it with samba over my network.
Now I have build a HTPC like system and want to put the 2TB disk in that system. This system runs windows 10. I doubted if I could simply connect it to my new system but tried just to see if it would work. It shows as unallocated space in the Windows disk manager so I figured I should just copy all the files to another disk, then format the 2TB disk in windows and copy all the files back.
Unfortunately I can't mount my 2TB disk anymore on my NAS. When I do fdisk -l is shows as a Microsoft Reserved Partition:
Disk /dev/sda: 1.8Tib, 2000398934016 bytes, 3907029168 sectors
Units: sectors of 1 * 512 = 512 bytes
Sector size (logical/physical): 512 bytes / 4096 bytes
I/O size (minimum/optimal): 4096 bytes / 4096 bytes
Disklabel type: gpt
Disk identifier: F7CB1168-49F7-4885-BFE2-EF9905099A86
Device Start End Sectors Size Type
/dev/sda1 34 32767 32734 16M Microsoft reserved
Partition 1 does not start on physical sector boundary.
EDIT 1: I opened the disk in gparted. According to gparted it has 16Mb partition with the next warning:
Unable to detect file system! Possible reasons are:
- The file system is dammaged
- The file system is unknown to GParted
- There is no file system available (unformatted)
- The device entry /dev/sda1 is missing
The other 1.82Tb shows as unallocated
EDIT2: my fstab shows:
# data disk
UUID=cfcf09cb-55-fc-40a7-b0b3-afd4d809bb09 /media/emiel/data ext4 auto,user,rw 0 0
I am trying to mount the disk from the terminal for now.
EDIT 3: As per @Rusi's suggestion I tried parted rescue with no results:
emiel@ubuntu:~$ sudo parted /dev/sda print
Model: ATA WDC WD20EZRZ-00Z (scsi)
Disk /dev/sda: 2000GB
Sector size (logical/physical): 512B/4096B
Partition Table: gpt
Disk Flags:
Number Start End Size File system Name Flags
1 17.4kB 16.8MB 16.8MB Microsoft reserved partition msftres
emiel@ubuntu:~$ sudo sfdisk -d /dev/sda
label: gpt
label-id: F7CB1168-49F7-4885-BFE2-EF9905099A86
device: /dev/sda
unit: sectors
first-lba: 34
last-lba: 3907029134
/dev/sda1 : start= 34, size= 32734, type=E3C9E316-0B5C-4DB8-817D-F92DF00215AE, uuid=58F98377-19F8-46D0-AF53-490D2987D76D, name="Microsoft reserved partition"
emiel@ubuntu:~$ sudo parted /dev/sda rescue
Start? 34
End? 3907029134
searching for file systems... 100% (time left 00:00)Information: You may need to update /etc/fstab.
EDIT 4: I tried gdisk as per @Rusi's suggestion with the next result:
emiel@ubuntu:~$ sudo gdisk /dev/sda
GPT fdisk (gdisk) version 1.0.3
The protective MBR's 0xEE partition is oversized! Auto-repairing.
Partition table scan:
MBR: protective
BSD: not present
APM: not present
GPT: present
Found valid GPT with protective MBR; using GPT.
EDIT 5: After the above I tried TestDisk to scan my drive. It is still scanning but it outputs a lot of the same thing. Can someone explain to me what this means?
Linux 0 0 1 243201 80 63 3907029168 [data]
Linux 0 0 1 243201 80 63 3907029168 [data]
Linux 0 0 1 243201 80 63 3907029168 [data]
Linux 0 0 1 243201 80 63 3907029168 [data]
Linux 0 0 1 243201 80 63 3907029168 [data]
Linux 0 0 1 243201 80 63 3907029168 [data]
Linux 0 0 1 243201 80 63 3907029168 [data]
Linux 0 0 1 243201 80 63 3907029168 [data]
Linux 0 0 1 243201 80 63 3907029168 [data]
Linux 0 0 1 243201 80 63 3907029168 [data]
EDIT 6: Overnight the above (MBR) scan completed with the following result:
TestDisk 7.0, Data Recovery Utility, April 2015
Christophe GRENIER <[email protected]>
http://www.cgsecurity.org
Disk /dev/sda - 2000 GB / 1863 GiB - CHS 243201 255 63
The harddisk (2000 GB / 1863 GiB) seems too small! (< 2999 GB / 2793 GiB)
Check the harddisk size: HD jumpers settings, BIOS detection...
The following partition can't be recovered:
Partition Start End Size in sectors
> Linux 121428 157 10 364629 238 9 3907029168 [data]
[ Continue ]
ext4 blocksize=4096 Large_file Sparse_SB Recover, 2000 GB / 1863 GiB
After I hit continue I wasn't able to browse files or do anything at all listed on the walkthrough. I could only 'quit'.
EDIT 7: But then I thought, maybe I should scan as "None" partition table, as suggested when I start testdisk, so I did:
Disk /dev/sdc - 2000 GB / 1863 GiB - CHS 243201 255 63
Current partition structure:
Partition Start End Size in sectors
P ext4 0 0 1 243201 80 63 3907029168 [data]
This is exactly what is on my disk, an ext4 partition covering the whole disk named "data".
My conclusion: When I formated the disk 2+ year ago I did it wrong but did not notice, which resulted in a disk without a partition table. When I connected it to my Windows machine it found no partition table and created a wrong one. So I think I need to delete the partition table. I did search online but there is no information mentioning ONLY removing the partition table, not the existing partitions.
Another option would maybe be to create a correct partition table myself to point at the existing ext4 partition.
My question: Is my conclusion right? And can you advise me on how to accomplish above tasks?