Restoring working but messed up partition table

mjs2020 · 12-06-2004, 05:50 PM

I got a Slackware10 and WinXPhome on my fujitsu-siemens amiloD laptop.
I partitioned my 20gb hard drive with partition magic to install Linux. Now I want to change some of the partitions put partition magic says the disk is damaged and won't let me do anything. Both OSes are working perfectly.
I probably just need to fix the partition table but I have no knowledge of how to do this. Google has given me some information but not enough.
Here is some info:

This is the partition table as printed by fdisk in linux:

Code:

Disk /dev/hda: 20.0 GB, 20003880960 bytes
255 heads, 63 sectors/track, 2432 cylinders
Units = cylinders of 16065 * 512 = 8225280 bytes
Device Boot  Start  End    Blocks           ID   System
/dev/hda1 * 1        1402  11261533+  7     HPFS/NTFS
/dev/hda2    1403  2432  8273160       5    Extended
/dev/hda5    1403  1997  4773856+     83  Linux
/dev/hda6    1997  2061  511528+       82  Linux swap
/dev/hda7    2061  2432  2987680+     83  Linux

Verifying the partition table with fdisk in linux tells me:

Code:

878 unallocated sectors

sfdisk -V /dev/hda gives me:

Code:

Warning: extended partition does not start at a cylinder boundary.
DOS and Linux will interpret the contents differently.
Warning: Partition 0 does not start at a cylynder boundary.

I've heard of tools such as gpart, testdisk... but I don't know if they are what I need. I would really like to avoit having to format the whole drive and repartition...
any help would be greatly appreciated.
mjs2020

jailbait · 12-06-2004, 06:19 PM

"Warning: extended partition does not start at a cylinder boundary.
DOS and Linux will interpret the contents differently.
Warning: Partition 0 does not start at a cylynder boundary."

I don't think that this is anything serious enough to worry about. I suggest that you just ignore the problem.

"Now I want to change some of the partitions put partition magic says the disk is damaged and won't let me do anything."

Use fdisk or parted.

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Steve Stites