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Bottom Line Up Front: I hope to find a file that is trapped in a Linux partition that various tools cannot find on a dual-booted machine.

Some details:

  • Dual-boot Compaq Presario with Windows Vista and a several-years-old (circa 2013) version of Ubuntu
  • After turning it on and choosing ubuntu as the OS, I am taken to grub (GNU GRUB version 1.99-21ubuntu3.14).
  • Searching in grub shows (hd0,msdos2) and (hd0,msdos1), but neither of these contains signs of a Linux filesystem.
  • testdisk and SystemRecoveryCD's tools detect no Linux partition.

I would be happy to grab a specific file in the Linux partition and then abandon the rest altogether.

What should I try next to find one particular file? It is a PST file that was created immediately before my school e-mail account was de-activated and erased.

Joe Mack
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  • Welcome to Ask Ubuntu. It looks like your version of Ubuntu has reached its end of life. Questions about old versions of Ubuntu are off-topic here. – user68186 Mar 26 '20 at 16:46

1 Answers1

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The most logical approach is to boot from a live USB session and mount the partitions. That will also take out any guessing: this method will list all partitions from the file manager and you can click them to mount them. If clean that will show a list of files regardless of what the filesystem is (works for ext, ntfs, and fat and probably also exfat but that was likely not used back then and might require installing a driver).

Then use locatedb to update the cache including the mouted disks and use locate to scan the system for .pst and .PST. Or use find.

Side note comment: .pst is an outlook or an exchange server archive. I would assume those should be on a Windows partition.

Rinzwind
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  • This may not work: https://askubuntu.com/questions/60202/updatedb-locate-command-problem-files-from-external-hard-drive-are-no-longer and: https://help.ubuntu.com/community/Mount/USB If it doesn't work you can manually mount: https://askubuntu.com/questions/1029040/how-to-manually-mount-a-partition Still I love locate so +1 :) – WinEunuuchs2Unix Mar 26 '20 at 18:15
  • Thank you for responding. I had difficulty getting this old machine to recognize a USB drive with enough capacity to use as a live USB, so I tried a live DVD. If that is destined to fail, read no further. (sudo) fdisk -l revealed two HPFS/NTFS/exFAT devices and nothing more. Mounting them and searching yielded files only from the Windows side of the house. What else can I try? – Joe Mack Mar 26 '20 at 21:54