Topic: Partition table problems on Vista machines
Hi,
I'm seeing some very odd behavior when trying to use partitioning tools on machines that have at least one Vista partition. I first noticed the problem when using Partition Magic from within DOS. On one machine it gave completely incorrect values for free space of the Vista partition, and on an other machine it says the partition table is "BAD" for the whole physical drive. Under Windows everything works and CHKDSK is happy. Initial internet searches indicate Vista may NOT be starting partitions on a head/cylinder boundary and Partition Magic probably won't like it, so
I decided to try the Linux based SystemRescueCD v0.3.2 (Jan07) which has some features updated to cope with Vista, but when I try the tools such as fdisk, sfdisk, gparted, parted, gpart I get crazy results (on the drive that has the Vista partition), but all these tools work perfectly on a second identical physical drive with data partitions.
Examples of "crazy results".
Loading gparted shows the whole first physical drive as "unallocated space"! But I'm writing this message after booting into Win2k on that drive, and I can boot into Vista too. parted says something like "The partition extends beyond the physical disk" and refuses to let me enter any commands.
The only program the gives sensible errors (to me at least) is Partition Magic under windows which seems unhappy about the drive geometry (CHS vs LBA)
===========================================================================================================
Disk Geometry Information for Disk 1: 4462 Cylinders, 255 Heads, 63 Sectors/Track
System PartSect # Boot BCyl Head Sect FS ECyl Head Sect StartSect NumSects
===========================================================================================================
0 0 80 0 1 1 07 1023 254 63 63 24,563,322
Info: End C,H,S values were large drive placeholders.
Actual values are:
0 0 80 0 1 1 07 1528 254 63 63 24563322
0 1 00 1023 0 1 07 1023 254 63 24,563,712 47,134,383
Info: Begin C,H,S values were large drive placeholders.
Info: End C,H,S values were large drive placeholders.
Actual values are:
0 1 00 1529 5 13 07 4462 254 63 24563712 47134383
Error #105: Partition didn't begin on head boundary.
ucBeginHead expected to be 0 or 1, not 5.
Error #106: Partition didn't begin on head boundary.
ucBeginSector expected to be 1, not 13.
Error #109: Partition ends after end of disk.
ucEndCylinder (4462) must be less than 4462.
I'm at a loss to understand what's causing the problem, but I'm only seeing it on the two machines that I've used Vista on. I think the cluster count is higher than the total number of clusters and this is confusing the partitioning tools.
If anyone can tell me what to type at the Linux command prompt to debug the problem, I'll give it a try, it might help to make gparted and other tools know how to deal with problematic Vista partitions rather than just saying the whole drive is unallocated space.
Thanks.