Hi,

I used to have a dual-boot PC having Windows 98 SE and Mandrake 9.1. The Hard-Disk layout used to be like the following:-

/dev/hda1 (C: Drive) = 9.75 GB Fat32 Primary Partition (Windows 98 SE installed here)
/dev/hda2 = 27.45 GB Extended Partition
/dev/hda5 (D: Drive) = 7.1 GB Fat32 Logical Partition
/dev/hda6 (E: Drive) = 17.7 GB Fat32 Logical Partition
/dev/hda7 = 2.65 GB ext2 Logical Partition (Mandrake 9.1 installed here)

Once I wanted to reinstall Windows and hence tried to backup the entire C: Drive on the D: Drive which I forgot already had 1-2 GB of data on it and thus wouldn't have been able to hold the C: Drive's contents. However I never got any error messages to let me know that the D: Drive was full. Instead it turns out the extra Fat32 backup data spilled over and overwrote my entire Mandrake install partition i.e. hda7. Thereafter LILO failed to load the Linux image and gave error displaying an indecipherable string of letters and numbers (starting memory location of the corrupted
Linux image in my opinion).

Now when I tried to view my partition table using the fdisk utility bundled with Knoppix 3.6 LiveCD I got this :-

Disk /dev/hda: 40.0 GB, 40060403712 bytes
255 heads, 63 sectors/track, 4870 cylinders
Units = cylinders of 16065 * 512 = 8225280 bytes

Device Boot Start End Blocks Id System
/dev/hda1 * 1 1275 10241406 c W95 FAT32 (LBA)
/dev/hda2 1276 4870 28876837+ f W95 Ext'd (LBA)
/dev/hda5 1276 2198 7413966 b W95 FAT32
/dev/hda6 2551 4870 18635368+ b W95 FAT32
/dev/hda7 ? 204769 165096 1828815217 ef EFI (FAT-12/16/32)


I didn't have any data on hda7. However I would like to reclaim the partition back, format it with ext2/ext3 and install Knoppix 3.6 on it. I went someway through the install process and quit when it asked me whether I wanted to partition my hard drive, since my HD is already partitioned. All I want to do is somehow straighten my ruined hda7 partition and install Knoppix 3.6 on it.

Help is appreciated very much since I am confused as to how to do this.

Thanks.

Well, all data on that drive is lost, you're going to need to reinstall linux. Simply reinstall it as you would if you were installing for the first time.

better delete hda7 and let the linux use the unallocated space