Hello:

I seem to be having an issue with my Western Digital hdd (320 gb 8mb). I originally installed Debian on the drive then wrote over it with a Windows XP copy for my girlfriend. When I installed XP it only detected 130 gb capacity. I didn't think much of it because this was only a temp solution before I eventually re-installed Debian. Now that I have wiped XP clean I am attempting to re-install Debian. Debian is only detecting 130 gb. I tried to go ahead and wipe the 130 gb clean, no luck. I then decided to take the drive out run it as a slave in XP and use partition magic to troubleshoot. Sure enough pq magic detected that there were two seperate linux ext2 partitions present. Debian is only detecting the first 130 gb partition and not the second 170 gb partition. Using pq magic I went ahead and deleted both the 130 slice and the 170 slice and formatted the combined 300 gb to ext2. Problem solved right?.... Well now I went ahead and put the hdd back in the Debian machine and attempted to reinstall. Now I'm able to see both the 130 gb slice and the 170 gb. These were both supposed to have been wiped out and reformatted as one 300gb slice in pq magic. I figure what the hell I'll just go ahead and try to initialize and mount the 130gb partition for install. Now it won't even allow me to mount the 130 slice. Any thoughts?

Wiped the hdd tables clean while booting up in Knoppix using QTparted. It turns out one of my partitions was hidden. Attempted to re-install. SAME PROBLEM!! Tried Fedora Core 3 cd. Worked Fine......What's up with Debian. It doesn't seem to be reading the partition tables correctly even though they've been cleared. Does cfdisk 2.11 just suck???? What else could I use. It still thinks it only has 137 gb to work with.

Hi,

Sounds like you got some partitioning practise

Using fdisk. Format the whole drive and leave it as unformatted. Also remember to a
fdisk /mbr (the command can be run if you boot using an ordinary win98 CD/boot floppy) (master boot record) Don't use Partition Magic to prepare your disc, it surely can make alot of mess. I tryed it several times myself, before I took the time to learn linux' own partitioning program(s) fdisk & cfdisk

Then startup your Debian install using the 2.6.xx kernel boot parameter. Write this at boot: linux26

What do you get?

Sincerely, Jørgen

Nooooooo... PM just sucks...

Serious, especially if you have a drive that you can mess around with anyway, try to learn fdisk and manual formatting (mke2fs -j etc) now instead of later.

Originally xp would've had disk size limit until service pack2 I believe. As long as you follow the PM8 manual or tutorial on cd you should have no problems. But that is for you to decide. Good luck with debian install.
If you have the option pick one of most recent daily net-install isos with kernel>2.6.8 or start with etch netinstall if you have newer pc/lappy. You can still use sarge or etch system with etch net-install but with newer kernel.
If using whole disk for linux consider having a large partion for pix,video,music. You only need 10-20 gig for typical sarge install. Remember no more than 4 primary partions. You can have 3 primary partitions and an extended large partition including any number of logical partitions. Cheers.

Thanks for the input guys. Antiloaded I'll go ahead and use your advice tonight when I get off of work. Will running fdisk /mbr totally wipe out the MBR??? I will repost early tommorow morning pacific time and let know what happens. I do all my work during the early morning hours. BTW.. esje after pq magic failed for me I was atually using QTparted with a Knoppix live CD that failed me too. I guess it must have something to do with the fact that they are essentially the same program. And why would it read the correct hdd capacity with Fedora and not Debian????

Thank you!
Problem solved. Once I ran fdisk /mbr everything started to work fine. Thanks for your help.