# Solved: GPT Protective Partition Unmountable



## jcab82

I'm not sure if its necessary to say how I got to this point, I'm not even sure if I can remember, but here it is.

All of my personal files, my pictures, my videos, my documents, everything, is on a fat32 parition on hdc2 or the second partition of my second hard drive. I am trying to access these files from windows. Windows, however, can not load the partition. Under Disk Management the whole drive is labeled "GPT Protective Partition" ... it doesn't even see the individual partitions, just one drive with that label. From what I've found on the net I'm just screwed.

Is there ANYWAY to get my files?

Thanks


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## dustyjay

sounds like you have linux installed. I dont think windows will read a linux disc properly.


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## Scorpion

Does it say 'Healthy (Unknown Partition)' as well?

S.


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## jcab82

the boot partition on that drive is labled "healthy (unknown partition)" but the partition with my data says "Healthy (GPT Protective Partition)"

I know windows can't natively read ext3, but i have the kernel driver installed to make it read ext3, and i've not had any problem with it.

I wonder if the problem lies in the fact that there is a boot partition on the drive. would that possibly make the whole drive untouchable?


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## Scorpion

Here, read through THIS page, especially 13 onwards. Seems you are screwed with XP.....

If you created this partition for Linux, I'd suggest downloading a making a disk of DAMN SMALL LINUX. Boot to it, and it should be able to access the data, and probably send it to the windows HD.

If you created it via windows originally, and it glitched to this, then try THIS program to see if it will access the partition. I think it might, as it reads data 'raw'.

Good luck.

Scorp.


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## jcab82

well, i ended up booting into my ubuntu live/install cd... resizing my windows partition and making a new fat32 one on the main drive so i could copy files over in linux... then booted back into windows and i have my files.. now i'll copy over to the ntfs partition, delete fat 32, resize ntfs, and delete and reformat the entire other drive... 

this has been a nightmare... one thing i don't understand is why windows, king of the os's, doesn't have tools to get this stuff done... i mean if it is the os used by 95% of production desktops... why does an os with only 2% share have all the tools?

Anyway... case closed.


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