I had a system with 3 drives (and a dvd).
On drive 1 I had a win partition, a partition that I used for exchanging data and a swap.

On drive 2 I had several linux systems, the same on drive 3.

Recently drive 1 didn't function any more. So I replaced the drive. On that drive were 2 partitions, so I made the seccond a little bit smaller and made a third swap partitions.

Then I used I live Cd to set grub back on drive 1 and point it to the right partition. So far so good, my system restarted and I could start up my linux systems.

In Ubuntu I had mounted al partitions so on the desktop I have something like ... hda1 hda2 hdb1 hdb2 hdb3 and so on same for hdc.

But in my last version of Ubuntu one of the drives (hda2) is not there.

They are in the fstab, there are mounting directories but they are not mounted. It comes still stranger..... if I start Gparted drive 1 is shown as an empty drive, while there are at least 3 partitions ( 1 is accessible hda1 (with all kind off stuff on it) and the others hda2 and hda3 are simply not there......

If I use Gparted there is no partition at all at drive 1??
If I make them with Gparted and restart and use Gparted again, there is no partition. I get an error in the logs that hda2 and hda3 cannot be mounted...

is this a ghost drive ........

Can anyone give me a hint ?

CloudBuilder

lets call your old drive hdaold1 hdaold2 partitions with old mbr
and your new drive is hdanew1 hdanew2 and new mbr

since your sizes have changed the start cylinders for old or new will be the same but the hda2 will diff for old and new. so much for ubuntu.....fix by deleting /etc/fstab then while in doing hda2 as a manual mount such as
su
mkdir /test
mount -t vfat /dev/hda2 /test (edit vfat assuming its fat32 partition)
ls /test

if good redo /etc/fstab with new entry mounting to whereever you like and reboot to test

(2) the gparted may need to run qtparted or the other parted tool with su or root powers....have you done so

Post the output of the following command. You need to be root to run fdisk.
fdisk -l /dev/hda (that is a small L)

Waarschuwing: extra gegevens in partitietabel 5 worden genegeerd
Waarschuwing: extra gegevens in partitietabel 5 worden genegeerd
Waarschuwing: extra gegevens in partitietabel 5 worden genegeerd
Waarschuwing: onjuiste optie 0xfffffeff van partitietabel 5 zal worden gecorrigeerd bij schrijven

( translation -
Warning extra information in partition tabel 5 are ignored - 3 times)
Warning wrong option 0xfffffeff in partition tabel 5 will be corrected by writing)

Schijf /dev/hda: 200.0 GB, 200049647616 bytes
16 koppen, 63 sectoren/spoor, 387621 cylinders
Eenheden = cylinders van 1008 * 512 = 516096 bytes

Apparaat Boot Start Einde Blokken Id Systeem
/dev/hda1 * 1 81282 40966096+ c W95 FAT32 (LBA)
/dev/hda2 81283 232121 76022825 f W95 Ext'd (LBA)
/dev/hda3 232122 238216 3071880 82 Linux swap / Solaris
/dev/hda5 ? 81283 81283 2147483647+ ff BBT

Very strange....
I think delete everything from a live cd and make new partitions should do the job? And then of course make new entries in fstab....:-) (should have thought of that at least......)

Thanks a lot both of you!

CloudBuilder

That is not good for a 200 Gig drive.
Redo the partitions from fdisk (or variant of choice) NOT gparted (looks like it set up CHS addressing rather than LBA).
After that do the "fdisk -l" again, and check all the drives show 255 heads.

Hello everyone,

Thanks for the input.

After some excercises I made 4 partitions.
fdisk now reports....

16 koppen, 63 sectoren/spoor, 387621 cylinders
Eenheden = cylinders van 1008 * 512 = 516096 bytes

Apparaat Boot Start Einde Blokken Id Systeem
/dev/hda1 * 1 91429 46080184+ c W95 FAT32 (LBA)
/dev/hda2 91430 194357 51875712 4 FAT16 <32M
/dev/hda3 194358 196600 1130472 82 Linux swap / Solaris
/dev/hda4 196601 387619 96273576 4 FAT16 <32M

The strange thing is, I made hda2 and 4 FAT32......
Gparted tells that they are FAT32 but fdisk tells they are FAT16.
The partitions are now mounted and accessible.
I will try some other partition programm to look if it is fat16 or fat32...

Thanks anyway for the advices.

CloudBuilder

Did you create the DOS partitions in linux or windows?
What did you use to format the partitions?

I used partition magic in dos, because I was told not to use Gparted.

I also used it to format.

CloudBuilder

hmm, not a good sign CloudBuilder...2 things
1) do you know what were the problems with the failed drive?
are they the start of what is happening here or was the failure none of my business, heh heh

and
2) now that you have a partition table error....you can not in my opinion trust one tool over the other.....it may be better....for you to consider.....wiping your mbr for that drive completely and starting a new one......i mean new by zeroing the mbr......its not a nice step for some but there are some changes to your table that I think one or more of your tools is being tricked by old and bad info.

there is a linux way of doing it and a MS fdisk way. anyhow up to you.

Thanks for your replys, the troubles are over now.

To answer your questions (aus9) the troubles started, when my hda died. Since all my Lin files where on hdb, I thought no problem, put another drive in make 3 or more partitions (the former had 3), give grub the proper commands and your up and running.......

I forgot some things. First the 200g drive had been in use. I used a partition tool but that didn't work out well. I could start but ........ see previous.

In the final session, I wiped out the whole disk mbr etc. Made a fresh start, new partitions new mbr and changed fstab and made new mountings in fstab. Since I have been tampering with partitions for years, with all kinds of tools and I did it already for some decenia ago with dos ( 3 versions of dos and a bootprogram), I just was surprised by the strange behaviour of some of the tools. Normaly in this occasions there is yust one way to go, start all over again.

I have a little standalone rescue cd with a lot of partition, formatting, whiping etc tools, just in case and that was of great use.

Thanks anyway for all the replies.

CloudBuilder