1 Topic by Dave (edited by Dave 2008-08-16 17:58:23)

  • Dave
  • New member
  • Offline
  • Registered: 2008-08-16
  • Posts: 2

Topic: Can't approach my partitions in Windows

Hello, I used GParted to create new partitions. I work with a Livecd. It worked all fine, no problem with the program.. After restarting the computer I fined out that I can not find any partition I made. I can only find the original partitions 'c' en partition 'd'. The size of 'c' is changed (smaller), as I wanted. But I cant approach the other partitions.
What have I done wrong, or what schould I do to make it work?

Greets, Dave

2 Reply by stormhead

  • stormhead
  • Member
  • Offline
  • From: near Frankfurt/Main, Germany
  • Registered: 2008-07-31
  • Posts: 264

Re: Can't approach my partitions in Windows

Hi!

There are two placed in Windows where you would be able to find aour partitions:
- in the Windows Explorer. Please note that a pyrtitoon appears here (identified by a drive letter) only if it is formatted using a file system that Windows recognizes (whoch would be NTFS or one of the FAT variants)! So if you just created an unformatted partition using GParted, or formatted your new partitons using a file system that Windows does not know, you won't see them in the Explorer.
- In the Disk Management console (Control Panel -> Administrative Tools -> Computer Management -> Storage -> Disk Management). There you'll find any hard drive Windows sees in your system, with all partitions that Windows sees on these drives - no matter what file system they use. If you formatted your new partitions using the "wrong" filesystems on GParted, you should be able to re-format them here. Here you can also see and modify the drive letters Windows assigns to each partition (with one exception: you can't change your boot and system partitions' letters) - if your partitions are formatted using a Windows-compatible file system and they still don't show up in the Explorer, you shopuld check is they have a drive letter assigned (and assign one if they don't have one).
Windows 2000 and higher are not able to format FAT32 partitions larger than 32 GByte. This is a limitation which was introduced by Microsoft - users should be moved to use NTFS on such partitions. While this is usually not the worst suggestion in a Windows-only environment, it can be really annoying if you want to use a large partition to be used by various different operating systems as a common data storage! In such cases, you must format this partition using e.g. Linux; Windows will be able to use it without any problems once it is formatted.

3 Reply by class413

  • class413
  • Moderator
  • Offline
  • Registered: 2007-05-25
  • Posts: 2,376

Re: Can't approach my partitions in Windows

(Topic moved to the Support section / Live media)

Please, don't forget to mention the exact GParted version you use (i.e. 0.3.7-7, 0.3.8-1 etc), as well as a few details on the computer hardware and operating system(s) used. It is often useful to know such info to scan problem better.

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

4 Reply by Dave

  • Dave
  • New member
  • Offline
  • Registered: 2008-08-16
  • Posts: 2

Re: Can't approach my partitions in Windows

Thanks, it worked smile
I find out that the partitions are not complete empty.? Approximately 60MB is already filled with somthing that I can't see... Is that normal?  I do not mis it, but I like to know what that could be.

5 Reply by class413

  • class413
  • Moderator
  • Offline
  • Registered: 2007-05-25
  • Posts: 2,376

Re: Can't approach my partitions in Windows

One of the few cases there is something on a freshly formatted partition, is the ext3 fileesystem (Linux). There is about 5% of the total space, reserved for the root (to be able to operate the drive in case of full disk).

In the case of ntfs and fat/fat32, initially occupied space is very small, almost nothing.

I guess you mean that your partitions give a total of 695GiB or so, instead of the 750 GB the hard drive is marked. The truth is that the disk was really 750 billion bytes big. But the operating system makers and programmers, very badly, used to name 1024 bytes = "1 kilobyte", what is an error. 1 kilobyte (kB following the science and unit rules) is equal to 1000 bytes, no 1024. Further to this, they called 1024x1024 bytes = 1 "Megabyte", that is 1000000 bytes instead if 1048576 bytes. At the billions, this makes a distance of about 8% . There are no lost or locked bytes.

If you have already bought some specific models of seagate or western digital hard drives, you could participate in the trials some american attorneys begun just for this question. Perhaps you could win some new drive this manner (the attorneys will win some millions of $$$, of course). :LOL:  Newer drive packages often contain a warning about this issue, to be legally covered.

In the Linux world and the open source community it is usual to use KB for 1000 bytes and KiB for 1024 bytes. Same, 1 MB for 1000x1000 bytes and 1 MiB for 1024x1024 bytes. Similar for GB and GiB.

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