Need Help! I messed up my partition WITH data. [solved]

[aceO07]

Here's the details as I remember them.

1. I have 2 OS on my system. WinXP and Ubuntu on separate partitions.
2. I reinstalled Ubuntu a few days ago.
3. During the install, I selected to also mount my Data partition which was probably ntfs.
4. I did (probably) selected the filesystem of the mount to be fat32. I did NOT select the checkbox for format.
5. Ubuntu installed fine and I never check the Data partition.
6. Today I look and according to WinXP, the Data drive is not formated and in raw format or something.

So, I think by me selecting a filesystem during the mount process, it may have decided to change my partition to the fs that I selected. I hope it didn't format since I do remember not selecting the format option.

How do I reverse this? I assume my files are still there. It's a 400GB partition. Would setting the fs back to nfts resolve this? How would I do this? What can I do?

Help! Thanks!

 

[aceO07]

Here's the output from fdisk and parted if it gives more clues. I'm referring to sda5, the 400GB partition.

-------
sudo fdisk -lu

Disk /dev/sda: 500.1 GB, 500107862016 bytes
255 heads, 63 sectors/track, 60801 cylinders, total 976773168 sectors
Units = sectors of 1 * 512 = 512 bytes
Disk identifier: 0x9d359d35

Device Boot Start End Blocks Id System
/dev/sda1 * 63 21462839 10731388+ 7 HPFS/NTFS
/dev/sda2 21462840 61496819 20016990 83 Linux
/dev/sda3 61496820 976768064 457635622+ f W95 Ext'd (LBA)
/dev/sda5 63408618 903093974 419842678+ b W95 FAT32
/dev/sda6 903094038 976768064 36837013+ 7 HPFS/NTFS
/dev/sda7 61496946 63408554 955804+ 82 Linux swap / Solaris

------------
(parted) print all

Disk /dev/sda: 500GB
Sector size (logical/physical): 512B/512B
Partition Table: msdos

Number Start End Size Type File system Flags
1 32.3kB 11.0GB 11.0GB primary ntfs boot
2 11.0GB 31.5GB 20.5GB primary ext3
3 31.5GB 500GB 469GB extended lba
7 31.5GB 32.5GB 979MB logical linux-swap
5 32.5GB 462GB 430GB logical
6 462GB 500GB 37.7GB logical ntfs

 

[Nothinman]

So, I think by me selecting a filesystem during the mount process, it may have decided to change my partition to the fs that I selected. I hope it didn't format since I do remember not selecting the format option.

Trying to mount a filesystem with the wrong filesystem type won't do anything but make mount give you an error. And I don't think Windows or Linux look at the filesystem type in the partition table.

What does 'file -s /dev/sda5' say?

 

[aceO07]

I resolved the issue. I used testdisk and it found the partition. Quick to fix, except for the deep scanning of the drive to find the partition.