Accidently GPTed wrong drive

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1

I got a new SSD external USB drive.intending it for backup. Formatting it to ext4 kept creating errors. Than I remembered GPT. So going into terninal I Did

parted /dev/sda mklabel gpt

Yes I was a bozzo and picked the wrong drive. As long as I am mounted I can still use it… Rebooting and than trouble really starts.

NAME        MAJ:MIN RM   SIZE RO TYPE MOUNTPOINTS
sda           8:0    0 931.5G  0 disk 
├─sda1        8:1    0  65.2G  0 part /home
├─sda2        8:2    0  57.2G  0 part /Videos
├─sda3        8:3    0 105.6G  0 part /home/****/Partitions/VA
├─sda4        8:4    0 117.3G  0 part /home/****/Partitions/VB
├─sda5        8:5    0 117.3G  0 part /home/****/Partitions/VC
├─sda6        8:6    0 117.3G  0 part /home/*****/Partitions/VD
├─sda7        8:7    0 117.3G  0 part /home/*****/Partitions/VE
├─sda8        8:8    0 117.3G  0 part /home/******/Partitions/VF
└─sda9        8:9    0 117.2G  0 part /home/******/Partitions/VG

blkid
/dev/sda1: LABEL=“home” UUID=“ba7cb6b7-a319-4d4a-868f-bdca4fc94f3e” BLOCK_SIZE=“4096” TYPE=“ext4”
/dev/sda2: LABEL=“Videos” UUID=“040e631a-349b-4735-bec8-07df04ff8342” BLOCK_SIZE=“4096” TYPE=“ext4”
/dev/sda3: LABEL=“VA” UUID=“1045fc46-4a83-4180-9150-8c997a230e99” UUID_SUB=“a6729b66-ade9-4ac1-9cfb-f7282e83e7e3” BLOCK_SIZE=“4096” TYPE=“btrfs”
/dev/sda4: LABEL=“VB” UUID=“a52f518e-0fe2-47a2-b313-dfb938dc1c8e” BLOCK_SIZE=“4096” TYPE=“ext4”
/dev/sda5: LABEL=“VC” UUID=“e9c78e78-522b-4a18-ad6e-1192c600cbf9” BLOCK_SIZE=“4096” TYPE=“ext4”
/dev/sda6: LABEL=“VD” UUID=“0d7b716a-dd90-497b-9976-8118372c6cad” BLOCK_SIZE=“4096” TYPE=“ext4”
/dev/sda7: LABEL=“VE” UUID=“67b66f14-cdb8-4c12-94eb-b0eb14a2bb13” BLOCK_SIZE=“4096” TYPE=“ext4”
/dev/sda8: LABEL=“VF” UUID=“75e8521b-f184-403c-819e-6a4916e0007d” BLOCK_SIZE=“4096” TYPE=“ext4”
/dev/sda9: LABEL=“VG” UUID=“637f7c1e-7231-4616-aea4-338d74a9b637” UUID_SUB=“90a022fc-379a-4530-8c5b-e23d2ded0a44” BLOCK_SIZE=“4096” TYPE=“btrfs”

type or paste code here

I believe if I were to recreate the exact partions than I could be back in business? Not sure what the exact block the breaks came… Because I do know I had put in unknowns at the beginning and end. I am running testdisk right now which will give better as regards to block numbers.
Is there a simple way to recover my deleted partitions with everything in it, or is that all lost? As I said as long as I am mounted I can keep going. I just need mind partition atbles.

2

It is possible, but precarious.

I’ve done it myself (on purpose, to see if it could be done), but that was back on an MBR partition table.

I had the exact positions of the entire layout saved in a notepad text file, in which I used fdisk at the time to re-create the the original partition table/layout on the disk. It worked.

However, some caveats:

  • It was a test that I “messed up on purpose”, and wanted to see if I could theoretically recover from it.

  • It was an MBR layout (not GPT).

  • I had all the relevant information of the original layout saved in a text file. Every single position, size, type, etc.

  • I did not do ANYTHING to the drive AT ALL, except for the one specific thing (create a new partition table on purpose.) I did not do any formatting nor use any recovery software.

3

While the system is running:

This may be a good time to make a last BACKUP :wink:

Make Backups:

P.S. : everybody has such times :crazy_face:

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