Partition problems

Olle · 05-31-2004, 12:32 PM

I wanted to create a FAT32 partition on my slave hard drive so I could reach it from windows. I used Mandrake's Diskdrake, and two partitions was created. These did not work for some reason. I installed Mdk 10 and I am telled at startup that they are bad, so they can't be mounted. If I remove them will I loose the data on the disk, right? Is there any whay to solve the problem?

Mara · 05-31-2004, 02:50 PM

Were the partitions only created or maybe they ware also formatted? Are they FAT32 or NTFS? Please also look into your /etc/fstab and if possible post the lines you have for them (they're on second disk - probably /dev/hdb, so the partitions are probably /dev/hdb1 and /dev/hdb5).

Olle · 05-31-2004, 03:01 PM

Nothing was formatted. Diskdrake created one FAT32 partition and one smaller "auto" partition. The lines from the fstab file:

/dev/hdb2 /mnt/hd vfat defaults 0 0
/dev/hdb1 /mnt/hd1 auto defaults 0 0

Thanks for helping me Mara!

Mara · 05-31-2004, 03:20 PM

If they're not formatted, they won't be mounted - the structure doesn't exist. Format the partitions from Windows and then MDK should be able to mount them (or format from MDK...).

Olle · 05-31-2004, 03:28 PM

But if the structure doesn't exist, does that mean that I can remove the partitions again without loosing the data?

Mara · 05-31-2004, 03:52 PM

You can, if you have not copied anything important to them...But you can't copy if the partition is not formatted. I just don't know how to understand the 'loss of data', because it looks like there's no data on the two partitions.

sharper · 05-31-2004, 03:55 PM

What data is there to loose? Unless you went into the partitions from Windows and wrote something to them there shouldn't be any data on the partitions to lose.

Olle · 05-31-2004, 04:08 PM

Listen here guys! I am new to Linux and I am not so good at partitions. This is what I did: I had 20 gig data on my slave disk. I had no partitions on it. And I could not reach it from Windows. So I tried to create a FAT32-partition on it without formatting anything. I didn't know that this can't be done. And when I installed Mdk10 I couln't reach the files on it.

Olle · 06-01-2004, 04:35 AM

Maybe the partitions was created on the free space of the disk? So that the partitions are empty and the information is outside? I'm just guessing.

binidiot · 06-01-2004, 08:43 AM

Olle. Do not know Mandrake or the patitioning tool u used, but if you have Windows loaded somewhere it should recognize a FAT partition. If windows doesn´t recognize it then you haven´t created a FAT partition. And probable just made a marker for the Mandrake partitioning program. If this is the case, and you haven´t run any formatting or "write to disk" functions you should be able to delete the "partition" and all will be the same as before you set it.

Olle · 06-01-2004, 11:49 AM

Well, I deleted the partition, but now the hard drive isn't recognized by the system. Should I reinstall Mdk?

Mara · 06-01-2004, 05:31 PM

No. Don't reinstall. When you run from a console, as root (so after running 'su' command and typing in root password)
fdisk -l /dev/hdb
you should get something. It means the disk is seen (there's no reason to stop detecting a disk just because it has no partitions). Do you mean 'not detected' by not having a tab about the disk in Diskdrake?

Olle · 06-02-2004, 09:09 AM

Now I have detected it. But I can't reach the files. Diskdrake only shows the empty space of the disk. I think I'm gonna let a computer store fix this for me. I'm not skilled enough to use Partition Magic or any of these programs. But thanks for the help!