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Asked: 2010-12-16 14:09:31 +0800 CST

Change swap (potentially with user data) to ext4

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I have a 1 TB external harddisk where I recently installed Ubuntu onto. Before I had some backups there which I didn't want to lose. Therefore I created a new partition for Ubuntu. During this process I somehow must have changed the type of the backup partition from ext4 to swap (although I can't remember in doing so, but this is what gparted shows me). This new swap partition has never been used by the newly installed Ubuntu which has its own swap partition. Although I think chances are bad: Is there any way to get my data back from my backup (now swap) partition?

To clarify the situation, here's the current partition table of the device:

     Partition                  Start        End    Size in sectors
 1 * Linux Swap               0  32 33 12157 195 58  195312500
 2 E extended             12157 214 24 47791 227 52  572461058
 5 L Linux Swap           12157 214 26 12534 172 54    6053888
   X extended             12534 172 55 17397 188  7   78125056
 6 L Linux                12534 205 24 17397 188  7   78123008
   X extended             17397 188  8 47791 227 52  488282112
 7 L Linux                17397 220 40 47791 227 52  488280064
10.10 filesystem swap partitioning ext4

2 Answers

  1. If what you say above is 100% sure then use testdisk.

    1. Install it: aptitude install testdisk
    2. Run it and point the console interactive to the partition that you are sure it is the one you had before.
    3. If there has been no changes then you should have a big chance of recovering everything.
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  2. If the partion was never used, it is totally recoverable because the data is untouched and the partition size is also kept, you just just use fdisk and change the partition type back to ext:

    sudo fdisk device
Command (m for help): t
Partition number (1-8): your partition number
Hex code (type L to list codes): 83

    However the "I somehow must have changed the type of the backup partition from ext4 to swap" sounds more like that you have deleted/recreate the partition, the installer does not provide a simple way to modify partition types. testdisk might still help but I wouldn't expect a full recovery.

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