I have a dual boot system with W11 on a separate drive and use an external HDD exclusively for Linux backups via Timeshift.
A few weeks ago i went to open Timeshift and the drive was no longer recognized and looking into it it shows as having two partitions one of which (a small one) being system reserved which looked to me like something Windows would do. Went to ask them and they said the system would never partition a drive on it’s own.
So i dismissed it as me sleepwalking doing it or something and setup the drive again and made some backups to it.
Now after a couple of weeks it happened again which is no good as i’d like to trust my backups being there.
I use the PC as a regular desktop and the only thing i do to it is updating with the yay command. This time i’m 100% sure i didn’t partition anything by mistake, is there a way to find out what happened?
Thanks.
Edit: Also around the same time Windows license deactivated itself due to “hardware” changes that never happened, I’m hesitant to call them about it because they’ll probably just blame the dual boot for everything and I won’t get an answer.
Hi Sorry to hear you’re having these issues. My default is to always blame W11 as it does some off things to your HDDs, and although I’ve never heard of it re-partitioning a HDD without the user knowing nothing surprises me these days.
First lets clear up a few things in your post. From your description, do you have have both windows and Linux on the same HDD with the external one used only for backups? That’s how I read your note. Or do you have have Linux and windows on separate HDD (which can also be implied from your text) ? And just to verify the issue that your having is that your external HDD, again only being used by Linux for back, is the one you are having issues with correct? You state that it’s no longer being recognize. Aside from the mysterious reserved partition, what does the rest of the drive look like? What does the partition schema look like now and what did it look like before? Have you tested the drive to make sure it’s not failing? what does SAFE say about the drive health?
Regardless you also mentioned you spoke to “them” about your issue, can you better explain who “them” refers too? Does anyone else have access to your computer? Is it a personal devise, meaning you administrate it or is there another group who administrate it, work school etc.
My first thought would be to check the external drive for errors just to make sure you’re not having a hardware issue, second would be to review if windows did any recent major updates that would have caused it to create a reserved partition, and last if you don’t solely administer the PC then to assume IT did something as they were applying updates for whatever. That last one is a bit on the paranoid side and can obviously discounted if you manage your own machine.
Hey, PC is my desktop for personal use and no one as access to it.
Systems are on separate internal drives and use an external USB one as backups which has (had…) one partition in ext4 used for Linux backups as it’s my main OS.
After it happened the drive had 2 partitions with no data in it, can’t remember which format but will check after work!
“Them” was actually a windows forum, don’t want to go the official route yet as they’d blame it on the dual booting and probably get no answers, but will eventually need to as the system license is deactivated right now.
Did some windows updates but the issue happened twice few weeks apart.
And no, didn’t check the HDD health but will do.
got it, I’d start by checking the HD health and reviewing the windows updates to see what they were. I’d also check journalctl looking for anything that may have run parted