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To start, this is similar but not the same to Accidentally did dd /dev/sda because I restarted my computer.

I was making a bootable usb, and when I went to clear the partitions of the usb, I did:

dd if=/dev/zero of=/dev/sdb count=1 bs=4096

It turns out that sdb was my main hard drive for this particular boot (I don't know why, forgot to check before Destroying Data)

I was running dual boot with 15G in linux (part. 3), ~275G in Windows (part. 2).

I already shutdown my computer unknowingly. When I boot, I get ThinkPad splash screen, then:

Initializing Intel boot agent
Initializing and establishing link...

PXE-E61: Media test failure, check cable
PXE-M0F: Exiting Intel boot agent.

Booting to a Kali live thumbdrive, fdisk -l gives:

Disk /dev/sda: 298.1 GiB, 320072933376 bytes, 120845300 sectors
Units: sectors of 1 * 512 = 512 bytes
Sector size (logical/physical): 512 bytes / 512 bytes
I/O size (minimum/optimal): 512 bytes / 512 bytes

With no device list.

I would like to recover full working capability of my machine again, though I at least want my data if possible.

Let me know if any other information is needed. If you somehow haven't noticed yet, I'm a noob, so noob-friendly answers are appreciated. Thank you.

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    If gpt drive, you have a backup partition table at end of drive. And if gpt then try gdisk. http://www.rodsbooks.com/gdisk/repairing.html – oldfred Apr 07 '18 at 18:10

1 Answers1

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Repair grub

It should work to re-install / repair the bootloader grub.

Several methods are described at the following link,

Grub 2: Fixing a Broken System

If you find the 'manual' methods too difficult, you can try the Boot Repair method according to the following link,

help.ubuntu.com/community/Boot-Repair

Repair the partition table

But what about the partition table? Have you got any idea about it, some backup? If there is a GUID partition table, GPT, there is a backup partition table at the tail end of the drive. @oldfred gave us the following link,

www.rodsbooks.com/gdisk/repairing.html

Otherwise TestDisk is a good alternative, because you have only damaged a small part of the head end. See this link,

Scroll to 'Recover the partition table, file systems and/or file content'

Tools with a final checkpoint

In the future, please use a tool with a final checkpoint, when you create USB boot drives, for example 'Disks' alias gnome-disks or mkusb.

sudodus
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