near heart attack!

So I downloaded the new livecd.  I managed to extend my home partition to the right happily.  So far, was so good....

I then decided to try to extend my root partition to the left.  It started off ok: it copied the data and seemed happy doing it.  Then it gives an error, something like 'invalid partition table'.  Can't remember exactly, as I was too busy watching what it did next.  When I clicked ok, all my partitions disappeared!

Trying to remain calm, I booted miniPE-XT and ran Partition Table Doctor.  It seemed to find the partitions just fine.  Notably, my old root partition had moved!

Starting to panic less, I rebooted.  The damn thing booted windows, which was installed on a different partition.  I downloaded Ext2fs to check the root partition.  It seemed to mount just fine, so I downloaded SysRescueCD, booted off it, ran grub and reinstalled grub to its proper position.

Now my system works again just fine.

BUT THIS SHOULDN'T HAPPEN.  I'm lucky that I know more or less what I'm doing, or at least can bumble around enough to figure it out.

PS At some point, I'm going to extend that root partition to the right, as it seems to have moved to where I wanted it to.  But I think I'll leave it for another day...