Hard drive woes

[Lil' Abner]

Not sure if this is the appropriate group for this, but if it isn't,
maybe someone can steer me in the right direction.
On this machine my second hard drive is Western Digital 120 gig. I had
it all on one partition. It had 55 gigs of data (CD images actually) on it
and I wanted to set aside 30 gigs to install Linux on it. At the time I
though Linux had to reside in the first partition so, using Partition
Magic, I created the 30 gig partition in front of what was already there.
Of course it had to move all the data, but it worked fine. I can run Linux
using a floppy boot disk, and Windows sees the second partition as drive H
and I have access to all that data.
Now I have installed Linux on another dedicated machine and want to
remove the Linux partition from this 120 gig drive. But Partition Magic is
now showing it as a "bad drive". See http://www.mewnlite.com/pmscreen.jpg .
FDISK just locks up on it, so I can't even view the partition information
with that.
The Linux Red Hat Hardware browser displays both my drives and the
partition information correctly. See http://www.mewnlite.com/scrnshot.jpg .
My original plan was to use Partiton Magic to delete the first partition
and the just add the free space back to the remaining partition, but all PM
can see is a bad drive.
My Western Digital Data Lifeguard floppy disk utility can see the second
partition and calls the first one "unidentifiable".
Unless someone can help me figure out how to get rid of that partiton my
only choice will be to copy the entire 55 gigs of data off onto another
drive, then wipe the original drive out, reformat it, and copy it all back.
I don't have that big of a drive laying around at the moment, but I have a
friend with an 80 gig external drive I could borrow if need be. But that
sounds long and painful...
Partiton Magic created that partition in the first place. I can't
understand why it can't "see" it now!
Any ideas? Or where should I post this?
Thanks

 

[General Schvantzkoph]

Not sure if this is the appropriate group for this, but if it isn't,
maybe someone can steer me in the right direction.
On this machine my second hard drive is Western Digital 120 gig. I had
it all on one partition. It had 55 gigs of data (CD images actually) on it
and I wanted to set aside 30 gigs to install Linux on it. At the time I
though Linux had to reside in the first partition so, using Partition
Magic, I created the 30 gig partition in front of what was already there.
Of course it had to move all the data, but it worked fine. I can run Linux
using a floppy boot disk, and Windows sees the second partition as drive H
and I have access to all that data.
Now I have installed Linux on another dedicated machine and want to
remove the Linux partition from this 120 gig drive. But Partition Magic is
now showing it as a "bad drive". See http://www.mewnlite.com/pmscreen.jpg .
FDISK just locks up on it, so I can't even view the partition information
with that.
The Linux Red Hat Hardware browser displays both my drives and the
partition information correctly. See http://www.mewnlite.com/scrnshot.jpg .
My original plan was to use Partiton Magic to delete the first partition
and the just add the free space back to the remaining partition, but all PM
can see is a bad drive.
My Western Digital Data Lifeguard floppy disk utility can see the second
partition and calls the first one "unidentifiable".
Unless someone can help me figure out how to get rid of that partiton my
only choice will be to copy the entire 55 gigs of data off onto another
drive, then wipe the original drive out, reformat it, and copy it all back.
I don't have that big of a drive laying around at the moment, but I have a
friend with an 80 gig external drive I could borrow if need be. But that
sounds long and painful...
Partiton Magic created that partition in the first place. I can't
understand why it can't "see" it now!
Any ideas? Or where should I post this?
Thanks

Which version of Partition Magic do you have? The current version, 8,
understands EXT3 which is what you probably used for your Linux partition,
but older version don't (they understand EXT2).

You could use the Linux install CD to reformat the Linux partition into
something Windows understands like FAT32. If I were you I'd use the Linux
install CD to reformat the partition as FAT32 (don't have Linux format
it as NTFS even if that's an option, Linux has an incomplete
understanding of NTFS), and then boot Windows and use PartitionMagic to
reformat the partition as NTFS.

 

[Lil' Abner]

Which version of Partition Magic do you have? The current version, 8,
understands EXT3 which is what you probably used for your Linux
partition, but older version don't (they understand EXT2).

You could use the Linux install CD to reformat the Linux partition
into something Windows understands like FAT32. If I were you I'd use
the Linux install CD to reformat the partition as FAT32 (don't have
Linux format it as NTFS even if that's an option, Linux has an
incomplete understanding of NTFS), and then boot Windows and use
PartitionMagic to reformat the partition as NTFS.

OK... I have PM 8.0, but no matter, I'll try what you said. I have
already borrowed an external HD and copied my stuff off, so if something
goes awry, I won't have lost anything.
Thanks, I'll let you know how I come out!

 

[Lil' Abner]

OK... I have PM 8.0, but no matter, I'll try what you said. I have
already borrowed an external HD and copied my stuff off, so if something
goes awry, I won't have lost anything.
Thanks, I'll let you know how I come out!

Well, the Linux install CD wants to do just that... install. It won't
let me format the partition in vfat... forget the error message now,
something to the effect that it has to be a Linux partition. I deleted
the three Linux partitions, but that was as far as I could get. I don't
even think that took, because the only way I could get out of it was to
turn off the computer. Next time I tried the partitions were back.

 

[Lil' Abner]

216.196.105.138:




Well, the Linux install CD wants to do just that... install. It won't
let me format the partition in vfat... forget the error message now,
something to the effect that it has to be a Linux partition. I deleted
the three Linux partitions, but that was as far as I could get. I don't
even think that took, because the only way I could get out of it was to
turn off the computer. Next time I tried the partitions were back.

Yep, they never went anywhere. I'm posting this from Linux right
now. So I haven't done any damage.... yet!
Partition Magic has a side utility that reads information from the
drives. That *did* show the drive H as being there, plus a bunch of
other gobbledegook about the rest of it. But that does me no good as the
main program still sees it as "bad".
Any more ideas?

 

[General Schvantzkoph]

Yep, they never went anywhere. I'm posting this from Linux right
now. So I haven't done any damage.... yet!
Partition Magic has a side utility that reads information from the
drives. That *did* show the drive H as being there, plus a bunch of
other gobbledegook about the rest of it. But that does me no good as the
main program still sees it as "bad".
Any more ideas?

Which distribution are you using? With Mandrake or Redhat you should have
been able to select a custom disk partition mode (the default is an
automatic mode). When you are in the custom mode you can select each
partition and do what you want to it.

 

[Lil' Abner]

Which distribution are you using? With Mandrake or Redhat you should
have been able to select a custom disk partition mode (the default is
an automatic mode). When you are in the custom mode you can select
each partition and do what you want to it.

Yes, I used custom mode. Was alright till I got up to the point where I
wanted to format it in vfat. It's RedHat 9.0. That's when I got the above
described message.

 

[DaveW]

Partition magic in not always reliable, as you found out.

 

[General Schvantzkoph]

Yes, I used custom mode. Was alright till I got up to the point where I
wanted to format it in vfat. It's RedHat 9.0. That's when I got the above
described message.

I'm fresh out of ideas.

 

[Lil' Abner]

I'm fresh out of ideas.

Thanks for the ones you did have. I finally borrowed an external drive
and copied all my stuff off. Then Western Digital's Data Lifeguard tools
was able to repartition the whole drive for me. Got my files copied back
and the ext drive returned already. It wasn't that bad, after all.

 

[Lil' Abner]

You got THAT right!

Partition magic in not always reliable, as you found out.