Problems with hard drive

jim.thornton · 01-25-2012, 08:42 AM

I've put 2 WD 1.5 TB drives into my computer. The first was empty and the second was full (almost). The full one was an NTFS partition and the empty I formatted using "Disk Utility" as an EXT4 filesystem.

I copied everything over from the full drive to the empty drive so that I could re-format the NTFS partition to EXT4.

When I was done formatting the first drive as EXT4 it didn't show up as a hdd on the left panel in Nautilus. People kept telling me to not worry about it and just put a shortcut to the mount point. So that's what I did.

Now I've formatted the second drive but this time I used GParted because I was deleting 3 partitions that were on it and then re-formatted as EXT4. Once I opened Nautilus that drive showed as a hdd.

I then opened the first hdd in GParted (the one that isn't showing as a hdd) and it is showing as UNALLOCATED instead of as an ext4 partition.

This is really weird. Is there any way of fixing this without having to copy everything over again and re-format?

TobiSGD · 01-25-2012, 10:00 AM

Have you made partitions on the first disk before formatting it? If not you formatted the whole disk with ext4, instead of a partition on it. This is rather uncommon, but totally possible and working. GParted simply sees the disk as unallocated because it has no partition table.

jim.thornton · 01-25-2012, 10:06 AM

I did create a partition though but using Disk Utility. I clicked at the top where is said Create Partition or something like that and then select "Master Boot" which was the recommended option. Then I created the file system on it EXT4.

So, I'm guessing the only way to fix this is to re-partition the drive and re-format?

TobiSGD · 01-25-2012, 10:43 AM

Please post the output of

Code:

sudo fdisk -l

jim.thornton · 01-25-2012, 11:24 AM

# sudo fdisk -l

Code:

Partition table entries are not in disk order

Disk /dev/sdb: 1500.3 GB, 1500301910016 bytes
255 heads, 63 sectors/track, 182401 cylinders
Units = cylinders of 16065 * 512 = 8225280 bytes
Sector size (logical/physical): 512 bytes / 512 bytes
I/O size (minimum/optimal): 512 bytes / 512 bytes
Disk identifier: 0x00095efd

   Device Boot      Start         End      Blocks   Id  System
/dev/sdb1               1      182401  1465136001    0  Empty

Disk /dev/sdc: 1500.3 GB, 1500301910016 bytes
255 heads, 63 sectors/track, 182401 cylinders
Units = cylinders of 16065 * 512 = 8225280 bytes
Sector size (logical/physical): 512 bytes / 512 bytes
I/O size (minimum/optimal): 512 bytes / 512 bytes
Disk identifier: 0x93fd9413

   Device Boot      Start         End      Blocks   Id  System
/dev/sdc1               1      182402  1465137152   83  Linux

/dev/sdb1 is the drive that I'm having a problem with. It shows up as empty but it is full. (showing in GParted as "Unallocated").
/dev/sdc1 is the drive that I just re-formatted with GParted and it is correct. There is nothing on this drive at all right now.

rknichols · 01-25-2012, 07:03 PM

It is very, very strange that an allocated partition would have a type code of 0 (Empty), but that appears to be the case here. I just did a quick test, and had no problem with using the command line 'fdisk' utility to change the type code to 83 (Linux). Use the "t" command to change the type.

michaelk · 01-25-2012, 07:33 PM

As stated empty just means the partition ID value is not set. It is independent of the actual file system and formatting does not automatically change ID type. FYI The disk utility does have a separate button to change the ID.