1 (edited by PaulMW 2012-07-06 00:44:46)

Topic: [SOLVED] XP partitions with exclamation marks and not showing data

I have two XP partitions on a couple of harddrives which both (ie the 2x XPsp3 OSs) boot up normally.
But in GParted (running offof a CD) they both have an exclamation mark next to them in the partition list and do not show how much of the partition is used/free - or show the usual yellow "data used"  bands in the GUI - just a blank partition box.

And I can't seem to copy/paste these partitions onto other sdds - after starting into the copying process it just comes up with an error message.
As does trying to check/repair them in GParted.

And yes, I have checked that they are not hibernated or anything like that smile !

All my other OS partitions on various sdds and ssds -  ie 7 and several linuxes - display normally.
As do the XP partitions size-wise - and showing that they are ntfs filesystem.
But they both seem to be unable to be resized, moved, or copied - as if somehow GParted can't access them.

I say that both these XPs boot OK but one of them, on an 90G OCZ SSD, which used to boot up staggeringly fast, is now, for some unknown reason (a "Repair" re-installation over-write I did??) taking a minute+ to boot - ie back to the whirlygig drive speed of the other one!

Any ideas??
Or suggestions for any other freeware ntfs filesystem checking and repair apps?

TIA
PaulMW

2

Re: [SOLVED] XP partitions with exclamation marks and not showing data

The exclamation mark is a warning that GParted tried to check the partition and found a problem.
You can get the warning message by clicking on that exclamation mark.

Often, this comes from a bad o.s. shutdown. Please, reboot into the o.s. and shut it down properly.
To check and repair the ntfs filesystem, it is better to use the mswindows tools.
The command
chkdsk /f
or
chkdsk /r
for the specific partition from the command line (dos window), scheduled to run after reboot, is a good tool to repair any filesystem inconsistencies.
(the use of the parameter /r makes it longer to finish).

*** It is highly recommended to backup any important files before doing resize/move operations. ***

3

Re: [SOLVED] XP partitions with exclamation marks and not showing data

Thanks very much for that, O heavyduty upline smile

After I'd posted my query last night I looked more closely at another error message - in "Information" I think it was, or maybe, as you say, by clicking on the exclamation/warning mark -  which told me exactly what you've just said.

class413 wrote:

The exclamation mark is a warning that GParted tried to check the partition and found a problem.
You can get the warning message by clicking on that exclamation mark.

Often, this comes from a bad o.s. shutdown.

I don't think that that has ever happened.
Most likely the "Repair" reinstall of XP that I'd done produced one or two writing errors.

Please, reboot into the o.s. and shut it down properly.

I'd already done that several times - as I say both the OSs were booting up and shutting down OK - even if now very slowly in the case of the once-whizzy ssd.

To check and repair the ntfs filesystem, it is better to use the mswindows tools.
The command
chkdsk /f
or
chkdsk /r
for the specific partition from the command line (dos window), scheduled to run after reboot, is a good tool to repair any filesystem inconsistencies.
(the use of the parameter /r makes it longer to finish).

I used the chkdsk /f command as the error message suggested to find/repair a couple of small errors in the file system in those 2 XP partitions. One was just an image copy of the other and so it too, naturally had the same small error.
Don't quite understand why the GParted error message says to reboot twice - chkdsk automatically reboots once after it has done its repair bizzo and when one goes back into that OS it is going to automatically get a second reboot.

I was just a bit forgetful - seems to happen with age hmm - of the inbuilt winDoze chkdsk system!

AAMOI I've also only just found out that to do a good, bootable copy of an OS partition one often needs to specify "None" in the "Align to:" (Cyl, MB, None) part of the "Paste" command. Found this out from an excellent linux app called bootinfoscript which analyses/records all the various partitions' boot sectors and the MBRs.

Might well have a go at using the /p command and then maybe the /r if  bad sectors show up on a failing(?) sdd I've got.

Have posted this rather lengthy reply in case anyone else comes up with the same problem.

Thank you again class413 - as with the excellent LQ website, an annoyance to me is usually just a simple 10second problem to an upline smile!

PaulMW

4

Re: [SOLVED] XP partitions with exclamation marks and not showing data

Don't quite understand why the GParted error message says to reboot twice - chkdsk automatically reboots once after it has done its repair bizzo and when one goes back into that OS it is going to automatically get a second reboot.

This comes from the past and has to do with the check done after a resizing operation on ntfs. I am not sure that every windows version that uses ntfs behaves exactly the same manner, especially the various NT versions in the 1990s or even win95 and 98 with additional drivers. In fact, winxp does as you write. I would prefer to leave the second reboot to come up to the login screen, login, wait a minute or so to be sure that the registry update is done (sometimes it takes long, when we have many auto-startup programs or in "slow" computers), and then reboot to be ready for work. Vista and 7 seem to need less reboots than xp.

If the same error was in the two copies, most probably it comes from the source drive.
In any case, it is a good idea to check the drive "health".
A slow ssd drive is perhaps badly aligned, or has other hardware problems. Bad alignment can be fixed with GParted.

The /r parameter in chkdsk performs a filesystem check. In case it finds any bad sector, it tries to relocate the data to another good sector and marks it "bad". This is valid at least for the rotating hard drives. Every hard drive contains a number of spare tracks.


If the problem is fixed, you can edit your initial post to add [SOLVED] to the topic title. smile

*** It is highly recommended to backup any important files before doing resize/move operations. ***