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Old 01-13-2005, 11:02 PM   #1
Maik
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Unhappy Wrong partition table info


hi


I have been using College Linux for some time now and I want to change to Vector Linux.

My current partition setup is as follows:

*-hda1___Win98___Fat32___3.1 Gb --boot--
*-hda5___Linux____ext3____3.5 Gb
--hda6___swap____swap___280 Mb
--hda7__________Fat32____16 Gb
--hda8__________Fat32____18 Gb

When I boot from the Vector cd, I get:

*-hda1 EZ-Drive 3.1 Gb
*-hda2 EZ-Drive 36.9 Gb



Any ideas why i get this false information?
 
Old 01-13-2005, 11:27 PM   #2
homey
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That doesn't look to bad for a 40gig drive. If you run the command: fdisk -l I think you will see that /dev/hda2 is the extended partition and 5,6,7,8 are logical partitions inside partition #2
 
Old 01-14-2005, 12:11 AM   #3
kilgoretrout
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You are using a drive overlay program, EZ drive, which is used to install a hard drive that is too big for the bios to handle. Drive overlay programs are a terrible hack to get around bios hard drive size limitations and are nothing but trouble. The linux install program can't see the extended logical partitions and is reporting the size of hda2, the primary partition that holds the extended logical partitions from hda5 up.
 
Old 01-14-2005, 11:34 AM   #4
Maik
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Sorry,
I must make a correction to my original post, I tried cfdisk from the Vector 4.3 installation again and realised that it was NOT my primary partitions being shown!

But more confusing:

hda1 Ez-Drive 19 Gb
hda2 Ez-Drive 21 Gb

I do have Ez-Drive installed so it can hold windows by the hand and give be access to my 40 Gb of space. I am perplexed as to why in Slackware or College Linux I have no problem seeing my partition table, but in Arch and Vector, I get this Ez-Drive nonsense?

Is there any way to boot from the hard-drive (ez-bios) and then the Cd-Rom (installation)??

Last edited by Maik; 01-14-2005 at 12:46 PM.
 
Old 01-14-2005, 01:37 PM   #5
kilgoretrout
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In the old days you used to have to have certain modules compiled in the kernel for linux to use an EZ drive hard drive. I'm guessing it's a kernel issue; some distros provide for EZ drive in their kernel and some don't. Drive overlay programs were never that reliable in windows either and you would often have install problems with windows. The partition tables were also more touchy and often got corrupted resulting in a complete loss of data. As I said before, they're bad news. I assume a bios update isn't available for your mb so I would recommend getting a pci controller card. They have an on board bios that can handle large hard drives in spite of any mb bios limits. Promise Technology makes good basic ones compatible with linux for around $25. The best advice I can give is to back up your data to some external medium and ditch the EZ bios for a pci controller card.
 
Old 01-19-2005, 01:42 PM   #6
Maik
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OOPS!

A long long time ago, I installed ez-drive because 1) it came with the hard-drive 2) I was too lazy to search for another solution to my problem-- I should have tweaked around my bios and downloaded the latest revision instead. I realise now that I never needed this awful workaround. I've repatitioned my disk from the Vector installation and reinstalled windows. Everything works fine now:

I am recompiling my kernel right now: I was never able to get it to work before (VFS: unable to mount root blah blah hard disk error) and I am guessing ez-drive was the problem-- kernel 2.6 doesn't tolerate it!

Thanks for the help
 
  


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