Raspberry Pi Forums

Hi. i read somewhere that you should remove all partitions on your sd card, and i think i took it the wrong way. i chose data partition in the NOOBS recovery mode. im pretty sure i accidentally deleted the boot partition. any way to remedy that?

thanks in advance!!!

jedi5200 wrote:Hi. i read somewhere that you should remove all partitions on your sd card, and i think i took it the wrong way. i chose data partition in the NOOBS recovery mode. im pretty sure i accidentally deleted the boot partition. any way to remedy that?

If you choose to select anything to install from the NOOBS Recovery Console it completely destroys and overwrites any previously installed Operating Systems on that NOOBS SD card. I think it issues a warning and asks you to acknowledge it before doing so.

If you choose to install only a Data Partition I guess that would render NOOBS unable to boot up into an Operating System?

I think any previous Operating System and associated files and data are probably irretrievably lost. At a stretch it might be possible to forensically examine the partition layout remaining on the card to see if anything can be recovered.

If you are content to make a fresh start you can get back to the NOOBS Recovery Console by accepting the option to press Shift as the system boots up: you could simply reinstall Raspbian from there.

(What did you read that suggests that deleting all partitions would be a good idea? That seems to be a sure way of destroying your Operating System!)

What makes you think it deleted the /boot partition? I assume that the card does not boot. If it does, even partially, then you have not.

The data partition is an extra partition intended to allow a user to store files that may be needed on a second OS if you install that way.

Do you have another card for your Pi, or a laptop / PC that you can read the card with? Note that Windows can ONLY see the /boot partition. What can you see on the card?