I think I accidentally wiped out my ssd while installing Ubuntu

Question

Today I was trying to install Ubuntu and dual boot with my already installed windows 10.
I downloaded Ubuntu's latest stable version and burned it to a flash disk. I chose the language then I saw this message

The machine's firmware has started the installer in UEFI mode but it looks like there may be existing operating systems already installed using BIOS compatibility mode.If you continue to install Debian in UEFI mode, it might be difficult to reboot the machine into any BIOS-mode operating systems later. If you wish to install in UEFI mode and don't care about keeping the ability to boot one of the existing system, you have the option to force that here. If you wish to keep the option to boot an existing operating system you should choose NOT to force UEFI installation here.

Then there were 2 options (go back or continue to UEFI mode). I clicked continue to UEFI. Then I chose Something else. After that I accidentally clicked on "revert". After I clicked the bar on the top turned green and things look like this.

Now I can't boot to Windows. I also can't see my data from the Ubuntu. I used to see my data when I use the "try Ubuntu" before clicking on revert but now they are gone.

Is there is a way to get my partitions and data back? :'(

I am using a Dell xps 15 laptop. 512 GB ssd. I had 2 partitions + windows (450MB I think system partition).

Before trying to install Ubuntu I disabled fast boot and secure boot. I use UEFI and AHCI mode.

Here is my RESULTS file from the boot info script: http://paste.ubuntu.com/24149512/

Answer 1

Reading this Installation guide it does not seem like changes are made at this step and thus clicking on revert will only undo the changes that you have done on that step of installation. It seems you can safely go back and mount the partitions and check if the data is intact(which it should be).

This might tell you why you are facing this problem and maybe what to do next

If just in case if it isn't then Testdisk is a good package for file recovery(use the photorec package). But I have to warn you the files are not arranged on recovery and it's a cumbersome task.

Answer 2

The description of what you did doesn't sound like it should have wiped Windows; however, it looks like that may have been what happened. Some key pieces of information:

• The GParted screen shot you showed reveals just three partitions on /dev/nvme0n1, which seems to be your SSD:
  • A 536 MB NTFS partition (too small for a full Windows installation)
  • A 511 MB partition of unknown type
  • A 511,060 MB partition of unknown type.
• The Boot Info Script output doesn't provide detailed partition information because it doesn't yet support NVMe devices; but it does provide three extra important details:
  • The NTFS partition's name is Recovery
  • The third partition is a Linux LVM partition
  • The LVM partition contains two logical partitions, vg-root and vg-swap_1. Thus, this partition has been written to, overwriting at least some data that used to be in whatever partition(s) it's replaced.

Overall, it looks like you've accidentally deleted your Windows installation and replaced it with a Linux LVM partition. If so, it's very unlikely that you'll be able to recover your Windows installation 100% intact; however, you should be able to use a tool like PhotoRec to recover most of your individual files. Note, however, that PhotoRec reportedly does a poor job of recovering filenames, so figuring out what the files are will be a very tedious process. I've seen claims that some more Windows-centric tools do a better job of this, but I have no specific recommendations, except to ask about this on a Windows forum. If you have a recent backup, that may be a better way to recover. There's also a very slim chance that TestDisk or a similar tool could recover your Windows installation. (You'll need to delete that LVM partition first, but do not write any data to it or create a new partition using GParted or other conventional partitioning tools.) If you try TestDisk and it works, be sure to run a disk check on the disk in Windows afterwards, since there may be filesystem damage. Even if there's no filesystem damage, it's possible that a few individual files will be damaged. There'll be no way to spot this except by checking each file individually.

When you re-install your system, you may want to consider the difference between native EFI/UEFI-mode booting and emulated BIOS/CSM/legacy-mode booting. BIOS-mode booting is more familiar to most people, but your firmware appears to be an EFI, not a BIOS, so booting in BIOS mode greatly complicates matters, as described on this page of mine. Installing both your OSes in EFI mode is likely to be preferable, even if you need to learn some new things to get it working optimally. Note, however, that this boot mode issue isn't really at the heart of your problem, despite the warning you received. My hunch is that you accidentally went too far in the disk-partitioning step and wiped out your Windows system by accident, which you could have done no matter which boot mode you'd used.