Gparted USB Live, Kubuntu or Ubuntu can't see my HDD partition

In the middle section of the GParted window is there an exclamation mark?
If so then double click on this and a dialog box should pop up with some message text that might describe the problem.

Otherwise, would you be able to provide the output from the following two commands?

fdisk -l -u

where one of the options is a lower case "L" and not the number one.

parted /path-to-your-device unit s print

where /path-to-your-device is something like /dev/sda.

From the warning message it would appear that at least one partition overlaps another.

I suggest you carefully examine the partitions to see which partition overlaps another.  It is important to note that extended partitions, such as /dev/sda3 above, are a container partition for all partitions with the number 5 or higher.

From a brief look, it would appear that primary partition /dev/sda4 is inside the extended partition /dev/sda3.  Only logical partitions with number 5 or higher are permitted inside an extended partition.

To correct this problem will require careful partition editing using fdisk, or backing up each partition, and then creating a partition table that does not overlap, and then restoring the data from each partition.

You can have up to 4 primary partitions on a msdos partition table.  Optionally one of these partitions could be an extended partion.  The device numbers for these partitions are numbered 1 to 4.  (E.g., /dev/sda1, /dev/sda2, /dev/sda3, /dev/sda4)

Logical partitions must reside within an extended partition.  The device numbers for these partitions are always numbered starting with 5 and higher.  (E.g., /dev/sda5, /dev/sda6, /dev/sda7, ...)

104197590 is the sector at which the /dev/sda3 extended partition ends
14331930   is the sector at which the /dev/sda4 primary partition begins

Hence if these above number are correct, the sda4 partition starts before the sda3 partition and ends at the same location as the sda3 partition.  This is where I see the overlap occurring.

Unless you are comfortable using fdisk, and you have a backup of all your data, then I would not recommend attempting this method.  The fix for the problem involves changing the end of the sda3 partition to end one sector before the start of the sda4 partition.

One option you might try is testdisk, which is also included on the GParted Live CD.

Testdisk can try to discover what your partition table actually should be, and then you have the option of writing this new partition table to the disk.

You figured correctly.  Open a terminal window and run "testdisk".  Since the GParted Live CD is running as root, you do not need "sudo".

My advice would be to print out a copy of "fdisk -l -u" first so that you know what your partitions should look like.  Then when testdisk proposes a solution you will be able to check if it matches with what you think should occur.

Hey.

I just want to say thanks for all the help.. I used testdisk and tried to figure out how to make it work. Sadly I didn't, but I could delete the partition that made all the problems. So after deleting that I could use Gparted as intended. But now it looks like if fucked up when trying to install ubuntu and lubuntu from kubuntu netbook remix. Thats a whole other headache and for another forum

But again great support and a damn cool app.

'Glad to hear that this information helped you stepford.   

That is one of the key reasons for posting questions and answers in a publicly viewable forum -- so others in similar situations can benefit.