Corrupted GPT?
by pchristy from LinuxQuestions.org on (#4ZDMN)
Hope someone here can help!
System: Slackware64-current with AlienBob's KDE5 (all up to date).
Background: I do a fair bit of video editing, and had a GPT/BTRFS 4TB media drive. This was starting to get full, so I bought an 8TB drive to replace it. Neither kparted nor gparted wanted to partition the 8TB drive, so I used gdisk and mke2fs to create a GPT / ext4 single partition.
All seemed well, so I started copying from the current disk to the new one using
Code:rsync --info=progress2 -auv /path/to/src/ path/to/dest/This is something I've used regularly in the past without issues as it seems to be the quickest way of copying from one disk to another.
All seemed to go well, and the destination disk (in an external caddy) checked out OK on completion.
This morning, I removed the old drive from the computer and swapped the new one in. The new one is not recognised!
Code:gdisk /dev/sdX
GPT fdisk (gdisk) version 1.0.4
Partition table scan:
MBR: protective
BSD: not present
APM: not present
GPT: not present
Creating new GPT entries in memory.It looks as if somehow the GPT data has been lost!
No problem, you might say, simply start again. The problem is that the OLD disk is also now showing exactly the same error! I can't read either of them! Time to panic!
Now I'm not that familiar with gdisk, and there are some pretty stark warnings in there! If I'm reading the above information correctly, it should be possible to re-create the GPT from the protective MBR.
I have tried to recover the new disk using the r (recovery) switch followed by the f option (load the MBR and build a fresh GPT from it). However, the man pages are a bit vague. When I did this, it warned that this would create a new (?) partition table, so I answered YES and then quit - but nothing seems to have changed! Is it necessary to also w (write) after f? this isn't mentioned in any of the guides I've found.
Also there is mention of a b (backup) option, as if there is a backup GPT on the disk that can be used, but I see no mention of this in the table scans above.
Any help and guidance much appreciated!
--
Pete
System: Slackware64-current with AlienBob's KDE5 (all up to date).
Background: I do a fair bit of video editing, and had a GPT/BTRFS 4TB media drive. This was starting to get full, so I bought an 8TB drive to replace it. Neither kparted nor gparted wanted to partition the 8TB drive, so I used gdisk and mke2fs to create a GPT / ext4 single partition.
All seemed well, so I started copying from the current disk to the new one using
Code:rsync --info=progress2 -auv /path/to/src/ path/to/dest/This is something I've used regularly in the past without issues as it seems to be the quickest way of copying from one disk to another.
All seemed to go well, and the destination disk (in an external caddy) checked out OK on completion.
This morning, I removed the old drive from the computer and swapped the new one in. The new one is not recognised!
Code:gdisk /dev/sdX
GPT fdisk (gdisk) version 1.0.4
Partition table scan:
MBR: protective
BSD: not present
APM: not present
GPT: not present
Creating new GPT entries in memory.It looks as if somehow the GPT data has been lost!
No problem, you might say, simply start again. The problem is that the OLD disk is also now showing exactly the same error! I can't read either of them! Time to panic!
Now I'm not that familiar with gdisk, and there are some pretty stark warnings in there! If I'm reading the above information correctly, it should be possible to re-create the GPT from the protective MBR.
I have tried to recover the new disk using the r (recovery) switch followed by the f option (load the MBR and build a fresh GPT from it). However, the man pages are a bit vague. When I did this, it warned that this would create a new (?) partition table, so I answered YES and then quit - but nothing seems to have changed! Is it necessary to also w (write) after f? this isn't mentioned in any of the guides I've found.
Also there is mention of a b (backup) option, as if there is a backup GPT on the disk that can be used, but I see no mention of this in the table scans above.
Any help and guidance much appreciated!
--
Pete