1 Topic by Joegp

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Topic: After copy of XP Partition (NTFS) to external HD(FAT32)

Dear Gparted specialists

With gparted live, I copied my Win XP primary boot partition (32 GByte of NTFS) to an external HD (160GByte, FAT32). After copying, the external HD shows me in Windows Explorer only a partition of 200MByte (FAT32) containing no data. By using the application gparted live, I see that the external drive has the size of 160Gbyte (more or less) and the file system is FAT32. What to do to make the 160GB visible in WinXP? The partition characteristic is indicated within the utility "testdisk" as * (means primary bootable). Because on the external HD have been data before the copying process, which I want to use again, I am afraid to reduce size of the external HD by using gparted live or to do anything else.

Thanks for feedback.

JoeGP

2 Reply by stormhead

  • stormhead
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Re: After copy of XP Partition (NTFS) to external HD(FAT32)

Hi!

This sounds a bit odd, since you can't copy one partition onto another (which is what your post implies you did). Could you please be more specific about what you did to clone your system partition - did you have unallocated space (that did not belong to any partition and was shown in grey within GParted) on theis external drive, or did you resize or delete the existing FAT32 partition on that drive before cloning?

3 Reply by gedakc

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Re: After copy of XP Partition (NTFS) to external HD(FAT32)

Hi Stormhead,

I just tried to copy a partition and paste it on top of another one, and GParted permits it.  After applying the operation, the source partition was copied over top of the destination partition.  The size of the destination partition remained the same as was defined for the partition prior to this operation.  By this I mean that the source partition was "resized" to fit in the destination partition.

The file system type, volume label, and UUID are the same as the source partition.  Only the size of the destination partition differs from the source.

This response only addresses the fact that one can indeed copy one partition over top another.
I am still unsure of the meaning of the original request.

4 Reply by Joegp

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Re: After copy of XP Partition (NTFS) to external HD(FAT32)

Dear Gparted specialists

I think, gedakc has recognized the matter as it is. I did the following:

I copied a Win XP primary boot partition (32 GByte of NTFS) to an external (USB) HD (160GByte, FAT32) by pasting it on top of the existing one, and GParted permitted it. After applying the operation, the source partition was copied over top of the destination partition.  The size of the destination partition remained the same as was defined for the partition prior to this operation (160GByte). By this I mean that the source partition (32GByte) was "resized" to fit in the destination partition (160GByte).

I think, I did not have unallocated space prior to the coping operation (that did not belong to any partition and was shown in grey within GParted) on the external drive and I did not resize or delete the existing FAT32 partition on that drive before cloning? I just copied the source to the target and  meant that the resizing of the target would be processed automatically.


Thanks for feedback.

JoeGP

5 Reply by stormhead (edited by stormhead 2008-11-19 21:25:47)

  • stormhead
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Re: After copy of XP Partition (NTFS) to external HD(FAT32)

Hi!

gedakc wrote:

I just tried to copy a partition and paste it on top of another one, and GParted permits it.

In my opinion, this would be a serious bug - it allows for easy and irreversible data destruction. Blocking this "feature" would nod sacrifice too much usability (after all, deleting a partition is a mouse click away), but if you are forced to manually delete the "target" partition, anyone would really know what (s)he is doing.

@ Joegp: I think by this procedure the file system on the external drive was destroyed - which effectively means that all data stored there is lost (sorry for the bad news!).
If there still is a chance to restore your data, any write access to the external drive could make the situation worse - so you better NOT write to this drive; instead, you should try to recover as much as possible using the photorec utility (which can - despite its name - recover much more than "only" image files).

Edit: Filed a "feature request" about removing this "copy one partition over another" option.