I have a dual boot Windows 7/Linux Mint 14 system (installed Windows first) with a single hard disk and four partitions (in order: System Reserved, Windows 7, Linux, swap). I wanted to reinstall Windows 7 and shrink its partition (to extend the Linux partition), so here was what I did:
- Ran through Windows 7 installation (custom) until the hard disk part
- Chose the second partition (Windows 7) and clicked Format
- Still selecting the Windows 7 partition, clicked Delete (now unallocated with no type)
- Realized that the third partition (Linux) was affected by the delete (it became unallocated with 100% free space with type "Extended"; other two partitions are fine)
- Stopped the installation and restarted (it showed "No such partition" and grub rescue's prompt)
- Booted up an Ubuntu LiveCD through a flash drive and ran boot-repair's info function for details (didn't modify anything)
If it'll help, this is the information boot-repair gave me. The Windows partition isn't listed in fdisk -l (it jumps from System Reserved to the Linux partition).
Note that doing
mount /dev/sda2 /mnt/
gives me
mount: you must specify the filesystem type
and ext2, ext3, and ext4 as parameters to -t gives
mount: wrong fs type, bad option, bad superblock on /dev/sda2, missing codepage or helper program, or other error
Mounting sda1 (System Reserved) works, but I don't see how that would help.
I want to restore my Linux partition cause I suspect that since I formatted the Windows partition, it won't have anything inside it anyway (both partitions have roughly the same personal files).
Thanks in advance and please redirect me if this isn't the right place to ask.