On Mon, Jan 20, 2025 at 13:01:35 +0000, Adam Weremczuk wrote: > Please see the attached illustrating that, no destructive steps taken yet. > > On 20/01/2025 12:55, Adam Weremczuk wrote: > > Gparted seems to recognise the fact that 53% of space has data written > > to it. It also knows about the extfat system. > > This morning, when I viewed the drive through gparted on a new machine > > for the first time, it specifically complained about exfatprogs missing > > and told me to install it. > > > > I'm also wondering why a lack of partition wasn't reported in earlier > > stages and I managed to mount /dev/sdb instead of /dev/sdb1 and write to > > it?
(The image shows a partial screen shot of a GUI program with "/dev/sdb - GParted" in the title bar, and showing /dev/sdb having an exfat file system with size 3.64 TiB.) If your disk has both an msdos partition table (with no partitions) *and* an exfat file system written to the raw device, then you're going to have to consult experts greater than me to unravel this. Both the partition table and the exfat file system will assume that the first part of the disk belongs to them. Most likely, whichever one of them made the *last* write to the beginning of the disk is the winner, and has corrupted/destroyed the other. This is yet another reason I do not advise writing file system to raw disk devices without partitions.
