Thinkpads Forum

I am (or rather, was) running Vista/SuSE 10.3 on my T61p.
After my Vista installation refused to boot and suggested a system restore, I did just that, and restored Vista from DVD.
To my great dismay, I found out that the system restore not only reinstalled Vista, but also re-partitioned my hard drive, killing my SuSE installation. (Should teach me to backup my data regularly...)

Is there any way to restore my Linux partitions, or am I essentially screwed?

Any help will be much appreciated.

J.

If Windows actually took over everything including your Linux partitions, then yes you cannot recover. However, the last I knew Windows would choke on any partition that does not have a Windows or DOS partition type. You may still be O.K.

If you have a Linux LiveCD, especially a Gparted Live CD or a Knoppix CD, boot the live CD open a console and then use the Linux version of fdisk to list all your partitions and their types (fdisk -l).

It might be possible to recover you Linux partition if Windows hasn't overwritten it yet. I hope you haven't been using that disk!

You would boot off a live CD, shrink the windows partiton, fix the partition table,
fsck the linux partition(s), and reinstall GRUB. Even if its partly over-written, you might recover your data.

Do you have a copy of your old partition table? Or know what cylinder it started on?
It is possible to search for it.