Issue with Many Extended partitions
 

Howdy All,

So I have a 640gig hard drive that is currently formatted as one extend partition. This is extended partition is then broken up as follows:

4 gig - Swap
300 gig - EXT4 (Storage)
60 gig - EXT4 (Ubuntu 10.04 Root)
20 gig - EXT4 (Ubuntu 10.10 Root)
20 gig - EXT4 (PCLinuxOS Root)
200gig - Open/Un Partitioned

When I went to install Fedora 13 to the next 20 gigs, the partitioner threw an error telling me it needed to wipe out my drive in order to proceed, I told it to cancel instead. I now no longer can see my partition layout in GParted (On Ubuntu 10.04 or a Live Disc) instead it just shows the whole drive as un partitioned space:

http://i53.tinypic.com/2ilhnyu.png

What did I do and can it be un done with out wiping the hard drive? I'd really like to install Fedora and another distro or 2 (don't ask why, I'd just like to do it).

Halp!
~Jeff Hoogland

Don't wipe it just yet !

Here's a similar case to yours that may help.
http://forums.fedoraforum.org/showth...37#post1364122

I'm guessing that it still boots ?

BTW, have you got a primary partition that isn't logical too ?

Yes it still boots (into all three distros installed to the disc none the less!).

No, only the one extended partition. Reading over that thread you linked to now.

EDIT: That thread is almost like my own expect that Ubuntu also cannot read the partition table! (10.04 or 10.10 beta). I am going to give TestDisk a try and see if that can do the trick... Really don't want to reinstall everything again :-/

~Jeff

No need for testdisk (which is excellent) - just use fdisk to allocate the extended to cover the entire disk again.

Pre-allocate the partitions before using any installer - they all are flaky at some point.

Might try ultimate boot cd. I has a group of tools that may help. It got one of my mistakes to where I could at least copy the data off.

Mind enlightening me on how to do this? The drive is located at /dev/sda

~Jeff

I just tested this on an old 500Gig I had laying around.Updates to the partition table don't affect the data within (as you found out). Reboot it anyway.

Hold that for a moment ...
[Later:] Sorry, seems you'll have to run testdisk to find the logicals after doing that. I thought they just magically "appeared", but not on my disk.
Testdisk found my NTFS and two ext3 logicals fine.

Holding.

~Jeff

What distro are you using fdisk from that it works like this? Using a 9.10 LiveCD right now and the command seems to be a bit different...

~Jeff

Fedora 12 ... what are you seeing ?.
I may be able to find a Karmic somewhere. Might take a while, and it's getting late here.

Just went and did the same thing (same disk actually, in an external housing) on a Ubuntu 9.04 system.
All looked the same to me.

After I select "n" for new I have the option of hitting p or l for primary or logical. "e" for extended is not a valid input.

I selected logical on a whim and then pressed enter to select the default start, but it did not ask for an end after wards... I have 9.04 and fedora 12 discs laying around. Will try them shortly.

~Jeff

Almost sounds like there is a (primary) partition defined.
What do you see (from within fdisk) with a "p" ???.

I'll check when I get home (30ish minutes).

As a heads up though testdisk does find my partitions, they are just listed as deleted... System still boots to any of the operating systems just fine though

http://i51.tinypic.com/20hn42p.png

~Jeff