LinuxQuestions.org - Partitions Gone, Partitions Gone

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Partitions Gone, Partitions Gone

I booted into Windows and used Partition Magic 8.0 and it prompted me to yes or no fix partition table(s) that were(was) "offset" or something. I yes fixed it. Now, Mandrake 9.2 doesn't recognize it. These partitions were on hdb (5 and 6) and were in an extend partition probably. They're both fat32 and important.

Partition Magic often seems to want to fix perfectly good partions, and its normal method of "fixing" them seems to be to wreck them. I lost windows this way.

You could try a freeware program called BootPart.exe (Site: WinImage.com). If a useable partition is the, this will probably find it. You will need to boot from a bootable dos floppy or cd.

Good luck

Bertram

http://www.sysresccd.org/screenshots.en.php

There's also this. I have not yet attempted BootPart because I need to borrow a floppy(I only have USB sticks that my BIOS can't boot from and I don't want to waste a CD). I'll try that tommorrow, but some of those programs in that Live OS distro I linked up may repair my paritions maybe?

Also here's what fdisk on Slackware 9.1 printed:

Code:

Disk /dev/hdb : 20.4 GB, 20490559488 bytes, 15 heads,  63 sectors/tracks,  42349 cylinders units = cylinders of 945 * 512 = 483840 bytes



Device  Boot    Start        End              Blocks        Id                System

    1                    1        4438          2096923+      83                  Linux

        Partition 1 does not end on cylinder boundary.  

    2        *      4439      30884        12495357        f                W95Ext'd(LBA)

        Partition 2 does not end on cylinder boundary.

    3                30847      42320        5397840        7              HPFS/NTFS

        Partition 3 does not end on cylinder boundary.

    5      ?    4388968  4228558      2071690107          f6                unknown

So, I think partition 5 might be the free space in my ext'd partition. I should have a readout of what something newer like Mandrake 9.2 Live OS says about my partitions.

Partition Magic once screwed my partitions also, i will never use it on a linux partition again :)

Well, from Mandrake 10.0 Official I'm planning to move files from /copy to /mnt/win_c The partition is a NTFS file system. Is that safe? I'll be doing the mv arguement. Also, it's read only right now. Can I just remove the "ro" comment for /etc/fstab to have write access to this NTFS partition? Thirdly, if moving from ext3 to NTFS is no go, I think you can convert filesystems for Win XP back and forth(though performance will suffer), how would I do that and then, what would be the appropriate fstab arguements?

I'm having still have problems with the NTFS FS and bootpart.exe. Those are difficult instructions to me. I need something step by step and detailed in this case, I don't want to ruin anything. I'm running LILO now.

If you have windows and want to dual boot with linux, I'd recommend Red Hat Linux 9.0 .

it has it's own auto partition utility and if you select remove linux partitions, it will only remove the linux partitions. Which if you don't have any, that's perfectly fine. If you want to remove all of them, then just select remove all partitions.

esher2292

RH 9.0 is old and upadates aren't supported for it anymore. This doesn't help my problem, but thank you for the input.

I will now update everyone on my progress. I've been carple tunnelling in command line in my / partition that doesn't boot b/c of limited HD space. I've been delete /home files(separate partition from /) and moving / files that I put on there to /home. I still don't have enough space.

I've come up with more solutions to which no one can help me execute. I have a 2GB linux ext3 partition free on hdb1. Either... I mount something like /bin or /tmp or whatever is neccessary so that I can completely boot /, OR I can simple mount it through /etc/fstab (for this I need correct arguement help) and then move more junk to the new hdb1 partition which would definately clear up enough space.

So, I was trying vim and emacs I need a little help with that. Also, when I am doing that, the HD is full again. Can clean swap and delete some log files on / so that I can properly save the fstab when I finish modifying it?
My plan was to put this(or something very close to this) in fstab:

Code:

/dev/hdb1/ /mnt/linux2 ext3 defaults 1 2 (or 2 1 can't remember)

How do I save in vim or emacs?

in vim you save with the command " :wq " (without the quotes). You give this command after hitting Escape.