Unknown NTFS partition problem

Hi all.

I have mandrake and windows XP dual booting and I'm now trying to install kubuntu as third OS.
Unfortunetly for some reason I can't resize the windows NTFS in order to create new partition for the kubuntu. I don't know why but when I try to resize the windows partition using kubuntu's installer the minium and maxium sizes for the new partition size are both equal to the current size... And in mandrake the diskdrake just says that ntfsresize failed.
So it seems that there is something wrong with the windows partition, which is strange because I had not problems resizing it last time when I needed partition for the mandrake. And I have run chkdsk and defrag to make sure there isn't any errors in file structure.

Any ideas what might be the problem?

Thanks.

Welcome to LQ!
Try using partition magic in wondows or QTparted from a MEPIS or Knoppix CD, that should work better and they are more reliable than anything Mandriva, Ubuntu or XP has to offer.

Originally posted by ctkroeker Welcome to LQ!

Thanks! I like your signature btw, that's what I believe too.

Ok, so I installed qtparted v1.4.4 at mandrake (I hope this is ok) and soon as I started it from the console and selected the only HD I have the console log displayed this:


Warning: The partition table on /dev/hda is inconsistent. There are many reasons why this might be the case. Often, the reason is that Linux detected the BIOS geometry incorrectly. However, this does not appear to be the case here. It is safe to ignore,but ignoring may cause (fixable) problems with some boot loaders, and may cause problems with FAT file systems. Using LBA is recommended.
No Implementation: Support for opening ntfs file systems is not implemented yet.
Error: Filesystem was not cleanly unmounted! You should e2fsck. Modifying an unclean filesystem could cause severe corruption.
Error: Filesystem was not cleanly unmounted! You should e2fsck. Modifying an unclean filesystem could cause severe corruption.

Inconsistent doesn't sound too good and I wonder what (partition?) gives the unmounted error. The windows NTFS partition is mounted in mandrake and there is actually a FAT32 partition mounted as well that contains windows installation files.

Here's a screenshot:


Ok so I tried to resize the NTFS partition but I get message box that doesn't say anything but in console reads: "Error: Partition /dev/hda2 is being used."

Then I made it inactive (but didn't commit the change) but after that the resize option wasn't available anymore. (Why is it the only active partition anyway, what does it mean?)

What should do I do? Should I make it inactive and commit the change? Perhaps unmount it as well?

Thanks.

You don't have ntfsprogs installed or its location is incorrectly configured in QTParted. QTParted uses ntfsresize from the ntfsprogs package.

Originally posted by igu You don't have ntfsprogs installed or its location is incorrectly configured in QTParted. QTParted uses ntfsresize from the ntfsprogs package.

You are right, thanks!
It's installed now but when I try to resize the console shows "letto: 0" to "letto: 99" before it says "Error: Partition /dev/hda2 is being used"

I'm going to make it inactive then...

Ok I unmounted the ntfs partition and it didn't complain any more about being in use. However now there is the same or similar problem that was in kubuntu's installation, the new size cannot be greater than 0.99 !

What ntfsresize -fi /dev/hda2 says? What ntfsresize version do you have? The latest is 1.11.2

Originally posted by igu What ntfsresize -fi /dev/hda2 says? What ntfsresize version do you have? The latest is 1.11.2

ntfsresize v1.9.1
NTFS volume version: 3.1
Cluster size : 4096 bytes
Current volume size: 90907726336 bytes (90908 MB)
Current device size: 90907729920 bytes (90908 MB)
Checking filesystem consistency ...
100.00 percent completed
Accounting clusters ...
Space in use : 25012 MB (27,5%)
Estimating smallest shrunken size supported ...
File feature Last used at By inode
Multi-Record : 90901 MB 0
minimal size: 88769860 KiB
You might resize at 90900336640 bytes or 90901 MB (freeing 7 MB).
Please make a test run using both the -n and -s options before real resizing!

So the version is 1.9.1

I installed the newest ntfsresize it's now giving this:

ntfsresize v1.11.2
Device name : /dev/hda2
NTFS volume version: 3.1
Cluster size : 4096 bytes
Current volume size: 90907726336 bytes (90908 MB)
Current device size: 90907729920 bytes (90908 MB)
Checking filesystem consistency ...
100.00 percent completed
Accounting clusters ...
Space in use : 25012 MB (27,5%)
Collecting resizing constraints ...
You might resize at 25011990528 bytes or 25012 MB (freeing 65896 MB).
Please make a test run using both the -n and -s options before real resizing!

So looks like it would be able to resize now... I'll give it a try.

well the dev2 is now smaller and there is free space like I wanted but windows doesn't boot anymore and dev2 which has windows and which type is ntfs is now reported as unknow is qtparted.

Can that be fixed?

I have succesfully installed kubuntu. Thank you all for the help!

It's the windows that's only problem now since it doesn't boot anymore. All I get is a black screen with one - char flashing one the top left.

Thanks again for all the help, maybe I should make another thread about this windows booting problem, I dunno...

It seems you used a broken Parted which corrupted the partition table. Your NTFS is still there, untouched but the partition table points to the wrong place so nothing can see it. Don't panic, it's fixable.

Not QTParted is the only partitioner which has this problem. It happens mostly using 2.6 kernels and old, broken Parted. Here it's explained what happened with you too. http://bugzilla.ubuntu.com/show_bug.cgi?id=12742

When I had the same problem, I just recreated the NTFS partition entry by fdisk using sectors as units. The start of the partition must be set correctly and maybe some disk geometry entries as well.

You could also try the 'rescue' command of the LATEST Parted to restore the right NTFS partition entry.

If you succeed then ntfsresize -fi /dev/hda2 shouldn't report ERROR anymore and you will be able to access and boot Windows.

Hey thanks for the help igu!

I did just like you told using the fdisk to recreate the NTFS partition and qtparted among others recognizes the NTFS partition again.

However the windows still doesn't boot but this time it displays some text on black background saying that 0x07 is unknown type. (I set the partition Id to 7 which fdisk reports as "HPFS/NTFS")

What do fdisk -lu /dev/hda and ntfsresize -fi /dev/hda2 say?

Originally posted by igu What do fdisk -lu /dev/hda and ntfsresize -fi /dev/hda2 say?

ntfsresize says:

ntfsresize v1.11.2
Device name : /dev/hda2
NTFS volume version: 3.1
Cluster size : 4096 bytes
Current volume size: 73720758784 bytes (73721 MB)
Current device size: 73722216960 bytes (73723 MB)
Checking filesystem consistency ...
100.00 percent completed
Accounting clusters ...
Space in use : 25012 MB (33,9%)
Collecting resizing constraints ...
You might resize at 25011466240 bytes or 25012 MB (freeing 48709 MB).
Please make a test run using both the -n and -s options before real resizing!

and fdisk says: (I translated the words from finnish so it might look odd )

Disk /dev/hda: 120.0 Gt, 120034123776 bytes
255 heads, 63 sector/track, 14593 cylinders, total 234441648 sector
s
Units = 1 * 512 = 512 -byte sectors
Device Boot Start End Blocks Id System
/dev/hda1 63 8195039 4097488+ b W95 FAT32
Partition 1 end not at cylinder boundry.
/dev/hda2 * 8195040 152183744 71994352+ 7 HPFS/NTFS
/dev/hda3 152183745 234436544 41126400 5 Extended
/dev/hda5 185749263 198026639 6138688+ 83 Linux
/dev/hda6 198026703 200264399 1118848+ 82 Linux-swap s
/dev/hda7 200264463 234435599 17085568+ 83 Linux
/dev/hda8 152183871 168955604 8385867 83 Linux

Partition device table info not in order