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I have a Dell XPS 15 laptop and a recent Windows update broke my system, I'm stuck in a perpetual Apply Update -> Fail -> Rollback loop. Before removing the hard drive to retrieve my files and doing a clean Windows install, I wanted to try booting into Ubuntu to transfer my files off.

I created an Ubuntu bootable USB with Rufus and after messing around with some parameters (nomodeset) I was able to get into Ubuntu.

But from here I don't know how to access and retrieve my files. In Disk Management the only drives I see are the 8GB USB I'm using to run Ubuntu. I can't find/mount my ~1TB windows drive.

Here are the results of running lsblk after removing the loop devices used for Snap packages:

ubuntu@ubuntu:/$ lsblk
NAME   MAJ:MIN RM   SIZE RO TYPE MOUNTPOINT

sda      8:0    1   7.5G  0 disk 
└─sda1   8:1    1   7.5G  0 part /cdrom

I'm not really sure where to go from here and am at a loss for how to recover my files this way after a botched Windows update. Any help here is greatly appreciated!

SOLUTION: @To Do's solution below was able to help me figure out my problem. "I had a similar issue when I tried installing Ubuntu on my Inspiron 15. See this answer: askubuntu.com/a/696414/27968. You may also try AHCI/SATA mode instead of AHCI."

Jake
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  • If the windows partition was not cleanly closed (ie. fast boot was disabled, hibernate inactive & was cleanly shutdown and not forced off) it should be possible, however IF those conditions aren't met, Ubuntu will ignore the file-system to prevent data loss. This may not be your issue though – guiverc Apr 14 '20 at 03:45
  • @guiverc Is there a way to check/change those settings without booting into Windows? Any time I try to it just tries to apply an update, fails and rolls it back. – Jake Apr 14 '20 at 04:07
  • Sorry I don't know, I've always had those options disabled by default in windows to avoid these issues (esp. unclean file system caused by fast-boot). Others on this site however may provide clues I'm unaware of (I don't support windows so have limited experience with it) – guiverc Apr 14 '20 at 04:11
  • The physical drive which is used for Windows is still in the laptop, right? It's interesting that you see your USB drive as /dev/sda but not the physical hard drive. Are you able to see the drive in BIOS? Linux should be able to at least see the drive - not forcibly mount the filesystem but at least see the physical drive. Also try blkid command in Linux. – Claudio Kuenzler Apr 14 '20 at 05:29
  • You may need to use TestDisk to try to recover the contents of the HDD. – K7AAY Apr 14 '20 at 06:01
  • I had a similar issue when I tried installing Ubuntu on my Inspiron 15. See this answer: https://askubuntu.com/a/696414/27968. You may also try AHCI/SATA mode instead of AHCI. – To Do Apr 14 '20 at 07:03
  • @ToDo That's the one. You saved me, thank you so much! – Jake Apr 17 '20 at 17:28

1 Answers1

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The problem is with a setting in the BIOS. Go into the BIOS settings and under System configuration change SATA operation to AHCI/SATA.

To Do
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