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I cant't access my Hard Drives. Any help would be appreciated. Thanks.

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Someone said that its shown. He also sent that image that is attached. enter image description here

Pilot6
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Vaibhav Chawla
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  • Which "Hard Drives" you can't access? – Pilot6 Mar 09 '16 at 13:45
  • The internel hard disk that I used to access on Windows as Local Disk (C:) – Vaibhav Chawla Mar 09 '16 at 13:47
  • So, you have only one hard drive? It looks like you installed Ubuntu on it. And you CAN access it. – Pilot6 Mar 09 '16 at 13:48
  • Yes. But i can't access it. – Vaibhav Chawla Mar 09 '16 at 13:49
  • Why do you think you can't access it? You can create files and folders on that disk. Regarding your Windows files you probably wiped them when installed Ubuntu. – Pilot6 Mar 09 '16 at 13:51
  • You can see in the image above that its not showing any hard disk. – Vaibhav Chawla Mar 09 '16 at 13:51
  • It is not supposed to show a "Hard Disk". Linux file system is different. Now you see your Home directory, where you can store your files. If you click "Computer", then you will see the root of the file system. But you are not supposed to do anything there. – Pilot6 Mar 09 '16 at 13:53
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    The second image is for a case when there are more than one drive. In your case you have one disk and you CAN use it. – Pilot6 Mar 09 '16 at 14:07
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    No i have more than one drive. Local Disk (C:) , (D:) , (E:) and (F:) – Vaibhav Chawla Mar 09 '16 at 14:10
  • Is it one physical disk? In linux disk partitions are not called "disk drives". If you had partitions and installed Ubuntu using "wipe disk and install Ubuntu" all partitions has been wiped. This seems to be the case. – Pilot6 Mar 09 '16 at 14:14
  • Yeah I did "wipe disk and install Ubuntu". Is this problem Normal or something is wrong with my hard drives. – Vaibhav Chawla Mar 09 '16 at 14:21
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    "Wipe disk and install Ubuntu" does exactly what it says it does. It formats your whole physical hard drive and installs Ubuntu. You erased your Windows installation when you did that. – TheWanderer Mar 09 '16 at 14:21
  • What did you think "wipe disk" meant? – TheWanderer Mar 09 '16 at 14:21
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    I'm voting to close this question as not reproducible because obviously the real problem is that OP decided to destroy all their partitions and their data while installing Ubuntu, so it's the most normal thing in the world that file manager doesn't list any other partitions or disks any more. – Byte Commander Mar 09 '16 at 14:33
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    Possible duplicate of [How do I recover my accidentally lost Windows partitions after installing Ubuntu?](http://askubuntu.com/questions/286181/how-do-i-recover-my-accidentally-lost-windows-partitions-after-installing-ubuntu) – David Foerster Dec 01 '16 at 07:17

1 Answers1

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Most computers come with one physical hard drive installed in them. If the computer comes with a pre-installed version of Windows, there will be multiple "drives" seen in Explorer, under Computer or This PC, such as Windows (C:), Recovery (D:) and Data (E:). A disc drive might show up as F:.

The "drives" you see here, however, are not actually each individual hard drives. They are called partitions. Partitions are sections of your hard drive and are essentially mini or virtual hard drives. Windows calls these partitions "Disks" or "Drives" so as to not confuse people.

Ubuntu works a little differently than Windows in this regard. Instead of pretending that each partition is its own physical hard drive, Ubuntu recognizes that they are partitions, and names them as such. When Ubuntu refers to a "Drive" or "Disk" (not disc), it is referring to the physical storage medium (the hard drive).

Partition/Drive labeling on Ubuntu is also different from Windows. Physical devices get a letter, but in a different way. For example, C:, D: and E: become sda1, sda2 and sda3. The number refers to the partition number; 1 is the first partition on the drive, 2 is the second, 3 is the third, and so on. If there is more than one drive in the computer, you may see partitions listed as something like:

/dev/sda1
/dev/sda2
/dev/sda3
/dev/sdb1
/dev/sdb2

The letter to the left of the number refers to the physical hard drive. sda is the first hard drive in the hardware order and sdb is the second. It doesn't matter which you plug in first. If your plug a drive into the secondary port on your motherboard, it will be labelled sdb.

When you chose to "wipe disk and install Ubuntu," Ubuntu didn't automatically read your mind and know which partition to erase, it erased the whole hard drive and installed Ubuntu in a new partition that takes up the whole hard drive space, except for a tiny other partition for boot files.

Your file manager doesn't show C:, D:, E: and F: for two reasons. One, Ubuntu doesn't label devices like that. Two, you erased your whole partition, essentially destroying all information on it, before you installed Ubuntu.

Maybe you're thinking that it's stupid for Ubuntu to label stuff so differently from Windows, but Windows is actually the cause for confusion here. Pretty much every other OS, including Mac, lists hard drives in terms of physical devices and partitions, not the unifying and confusing way Microsoft decided on.

Further reading on partitions: http://www.howtogeek.com/184659/beginner-geek-hard-disk-partitions-explained/

TheWanderer
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