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Windows 10 Anniversary Update Borks Dual-Boot Partitions (omgubuntu.co.uk)
Windows 10 Anniversary Update may affect and even delete other partitions on the same disk, OMGUbuntu is reporting, citing several complaints by users. "Broken boot loaders on an update are one thing but losing data, even entire partitions?" asks the author. Microsoft-centric news blog WindowsReport is corroborating on the report, adding that in some cases, the new OS was not able to detect some partitions. It says (edited): Many users are reporting that some of their partitions disappeared after installing the Anniversary Update. Usually, it's the smallest partition that disappears, although we couldn't say for sure whether the partition is deleted or if Windows simply doesn't detect it. Some users are saying that the partition is not allocated, while others can detect it once they install third-party partition management applications.We have reached out to Microsoft for clarification, and will update the post when we hear back from them.
lost my primary Linux partition which was my main OS. could not recover partition intact, only 120,000 files recovered with photorec. will use VMs in future if I need windows for anything
While I imagine I'll have to bite the bullet on my sole Win 10 machine eventually and download the anniversary edition, I intentionally set it to "Metered Connection" for exactly this reason. I like to let major updates hit and assess the impact for a few days before taking the plunge, and currently telling Windows you're on a metered connection is the only way to get it to not automatically download updates. Looks like I'll be waiting a bit longer than I thought - would not appreciate my Linux partition going up in smoke.
This is more than that... if the reports are true. They are reporting that it's messing with and deleting other partitions on the hard disk. It sounds like it's at lease messing with the partition table.
Also - It installs Cortana and fully enables it, no surprise there, but if you go into all of the privacy settings it has changed the settings for items like writing monitor to "help Microsoft track how you type". Yeah they need to know that all right... as well as several other items I found had been reverted back to the non private settings. One, the diagnostic phone home, is again on and takes a registry hack to turn it back off again.
"Computers are a lot like Air Conditioners" "They both work great until you start opening Windows"
More games than I can handle, really. All full Linux ports. I do have Windows, but haven't booted it to play games in at least a couple months now.
PHEM - party like it's 1997-2003!
Systemd is pretty much how Windows would do things. A massive binary that handles the job of many small programs and full of undiscovered security problems. Oh yeah and throw in binary log files (just like windows).
Only the State obtains its revenue by coercion. - Murray Rothbard
FYI, it's not just dual-boot situations that get borked. I have a plain old second physical hard drive in my computer, no unusual partitioning or anything, and it deleted the main partition. I restored it using Minitool Partition Wizard.
> They are reporting that it's messing with and deleting other partitions on the hard disk. It sounds like it's at lease messing with the partition table.
The Win10 upgrader (from Win7) did exactly this to my Linux partitions.
The upgrader needed a few hundred MB of space to create some sort of rescue partition. Rather than resize the 1TB NTFS primary partition at the front of the disk (of which 900GB were free) it decided that (because it didn't recognize the filesystem type in the partition) it was okay to _delete_ the first logical partition, resize the extended partition by a few hundred MB, and move the extended partition down. It then made another primary partition in front of the newly moved extended partition and formatted that primary partition with NTFS.
I've _never_ had a Windows installer do so much damage. Overwriting the bootloader? Sure! That's shitty, but entirely reasonable. Deleting partitions that aren't FAT* or NTFS because you don't recognize what they are and -thus- assume that they're unused? That's _incredibly_ shitty.
This is the kinder, more open-source friendly Microsoft, guys.
I hope to hell that this Win10 update doesn't put me through this shit again. That wasn't a fun day.
Unless you absolutely have to, do _not_ install Linux and Windows on the same physical hard drive. For many purposes (e.g. basic coding and web stuff) a lightweight Linux distro will run just fine off a USB memory stick (I use Ultra Fit's in either the 32GB or 64GB size). Then, if you are buying a laptop and you're a techie, get something where it is trivially easy to swap out either the hard drive (i.e. not Asus crap where you have to remove the keyboard to get at the hard drive), or the optical drive. For example, boot Windows of one hard drive, and stick another in the optical drive bay. If you have a desktop, you have room for more than one physical drive. This also means that, during critical stuff like OS installs, you can physically disconnect your Linux drive so that Windows cannot get at it. My favourite example of Redmond silliness involved Windows 2000 appearing to enumerate partitions one way in the partitioning part of setup, and another way for the formatting part. Basically, on my dual boot drive, Windows 2000 setup ended up formatting the wrong partition. I say it had cocked up when I noticed the size of the partition it was formatting: my shared data drive. By the time I had stopped the process, of course, the FATs were already overwritten.
John_Chalisque