Topic: [SOLVED]Can't have overlapping partitions
too long, didn't read?
I formatted a new partition on my drive with the old windows 95 fdisk utility, then set it to active. Now there is nothing on that partition so my PC won't boot my existing windows 7 install. I'd like to restore my drive to the way it was before I used fdisk. Gparted sees the drive as unallocated and lists an error "can't have overlapping partitions".
Hi all,
I am new here but I am full of hope that this is the right place to ask my question.
I ran an old version of the windows fdisk tool on a drive with 4 partitions (the 4th one was just unpartitioned space). I used it to format the last partition into FAT32 and then set that partition to active. Afterwards I tried installing XP on that 4th partition, but it didn't work. Now, my computer won't boot because an empty partition is set to active.
I ran Ubuntu 10.10 LiveCD and I was worried when I realized that gparted sees my drive as unallocated, and lists an error message "can't have overlapping partitions".
Here is the output from fdisk -l:
Disk /dev/sda: 500.1 GB, 500107862016 bytes
255 heads, 63 sectors/track, 60801 cylinders
Units = cylinders of 16065 * 512 = 8225280 bytes
Sector size (logical/physical): 512 bytes / 512 bytes
I/O size (minimum/optimal): 512 bytes / 512 bytes
Disk identifier: 0xd83b5f0d
Device Boot Start End Blocks Id System
/dev/sda1 1 1127 9043968 27 Unknown
/dev/sda2 1127 1139 102400 7 HPFS/NTFS
/dev/sda3 1139 54428 428037144 7 HPFS/NTFS
/dev/sda4 * 54428 60801 51199155 c W95 FAT32 (LBA)
I'd like to get rid of /dev/sda4 and set /dev/sda2 as active, as it was before, and I hope that will let me boot back into my existing installation of windows 7. However, I am afraid of doing anything to the drive, since my critical information is on /dev/sda3 and I'd rather not lose it... Is there any way to undo whatever that old W95 fdisk did to my drive?
Thanks in advance!