- Sep 28, 2020
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Long story short: My SSD is no longer recognized properly. The UEFI BIOS sees it is connected but doesn't find it to be bootable. I have tried to read the disk using different partition managers and they all say the same thing: it has one unknown partition on it, even though it used to have 2 partitions (and some extra tiny ones made automatically by the UEFI and the OS).
Since this information is probably not enough, here is a bit more background information about what happened:
I have a dual-boot setup: Windows 10 + Ubuntu 20.04. I have 2 SSDs (both are Samsumg 860 EVO 1TB, in case it matters), but since I bought them at different times I made my partitions a bit weird:
SSD-1 (931GB):
(i believe there were also 2 or 3 tiny system reserved partitions, like Windows Recovery and EFI partition)
At first, I thought that I messed something up with the bootloaders so I inserted a Windows 10 installation disk and went into recovery mode. The built-in recovery tool proved to be useless (as it always does), so I started Command Prompt and found that drive C: is my SSD-2 data partition. It couldn't find the first SSD!
I decided to boot into a Linux live session, since it has more tools available. GParted showed me that /dev/sdb was intact with all its partitions, while /dev/sda was pretty much corrupted: 48MB of unallocated space at the beginning and the rest of it was a single partition with an unknown filesystem.
I took the SSD out to another Windows computer and the Disk Management tool shows the same thing. I should mention it was a GPT disk, but I don't know if that helps (usually, if a PC cannot read GPT disks it reports it as a single unknown partition, but my PC is GPT-aware).
So my main question is: What can I do? Can I recover my SSD? (especially that data partition)
And, as a side note, is it possible to install the GRUB bootloader on the second SSD so that I can at least boot into Linux?
Since this information is probably not enough, here is a bit more background information about what happened:
I have a dual-boot setup: Windows 10 + Ubuntu 20.04. I have 2 SSDs (both are Samsumg 860 EVO 1TB, in case it matters), but since I bought them at different times I made my partitions a bit weird:
SSD-1 (931GB):
(i believe there were also 2 or 3 tiny system reserved partitions, like Windows Recovery and EFI partition)
- (NTFS) Windows 10 C: partition (~260GB)
- (NTFS) Data partition (~670GB)
- (NTFS) Data partition (~850GB)
- (ext4) Linux root partition (~20GB)
- (ext4) Linux home partition (~55GB)
At first, I thought that I messed something up with the bootloaders so I inserted a Windows 10 installation disk and went into recovery mode. The built-in recovery tool proved to be useless (as it always does), so I started Command Prompt and found that drive C: is my SSD-2 data partition. It couldn't find the first SSD!
I decided to boot into a Linux live session, since it has more tools available. GParted showed me that /dev/sdb was intact with all its partitions, while /dev/sda was pretty much corrupted: 48MB of unallocated space at the beginning and the rest of it was a single partition with an unknown filesystem.
I took the SSD out to another Windows computer and the Disk Management tool shows the same thing. I should mention it was a GPT disk, but I don't know if that helps (usually, if a PC cannot read GPT disks it reports it as a single unknown partition, but my PC is GPT-aware).
So my main question is: What can I do? Can I recover my SSD? (especially that data partition)
And, as a side note, is it possible to install the GRUB bootloader on the second SSD so that I can at least boot into Linux?
Last edited:
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