1 Topic by skingston

  • skingston
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Topic: Why doesn't the live cd show any of my existing partitions?

Hi,

I've currently got windows xp installed, with a couple of other partitions available (which I created a while ago) for other operating systems. If I run the gparted live cd (or other linux-based live cds) my existing partitions don't appear (only a single partition which includes my whole hard drive).

Does this mean my partition table is not compatible or something?

2 Reply by LarryT

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Re: Why doesn't the live cd show any of my existing partitions?

This is the second time i hear of this... Sure thing : there is something weird !
Could you please post a screenshot of GParted layout and the same with parted /dev/your_drive and also fdisk /dev/your_drive , please ?
You can find here how to take screenshot and import jpg : http://gparted.sourceforge.net/documentation.php

Larry
GParted-project Admin
Former GParted-LiveCD maintainer (2007)

3 Reply by skingston

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Re: Why doesn't the live cd show any of my existing partitions?

I didn't take screenshots as I'm using a laptop & have forgotten how to mount usb drive.

However, I'll type in what it says. It appears that maybe there is something wrong with my partition table.

Gparted actually says that my whole drive is unallocated.
Partion:unallocated, File system: unallocated, Size: 91.7GiB, Used: -, Unused: -, Flags:

When I ran fdisk /dev/sda, i got this output:

The number of cylinders for this disk is set to 11978.
There is nothing wrong with that, but this is larger than 1024,
and could in certain setups cause problems with:
1) software that runs at boot time (eg. ...)
2) booting and partitioning software from other OSs  (...)
Warning: extra link pointer in partition table 5
Warning: ignoring extra data in partition table 6
Warning: ignoring extra data in partition table 6
Warning: invalid flag 0x2901 of partition table 6 will be correct by w(rite)

When I print the partiton table it shows 6 partitions, when I thought I only had about 4.

I haven't used this fdisk before. Would it be safe to write the table as it is (without effecting windows NTFS partition) & do you think it will fix the problem?

4 Reply by skingston

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Re: Why doesn't the live cd show any of my existing partitions?

I made some modifications with fdisk, saved the changes and ran gparted again. It now reads the partitions normally.

5 Reply by LarryT

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Re: Why doesn't the live cd show any of my existing partitions?

nice smile

Larry
GParted-project Admin
Former GParted-LiveCD maintainer (2007)

6 Reply by woodsbw

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Re: Why doesn't the live cd show any of my existing partitions?

this sounds a lot like the problem that I had, can you tell me what you did to make it work?

7 Reply by LarryT

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Re: Why doesn't the live cd show any of my existing partitions?

woodsbw : maybe you should/could send him a private mail ?

Larry
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Former GParted-LiveCD maintainer (2007)

8 Reply by skingston

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Re: Why doesn't the live cd show any of my existing partitions?

I ran the gparted live cd, opened up a terminal window by double-clicking on the icon on the right-hand side of the screen and ran fdisk:
fdisk /dev/sda (as my hard drive is /dev/sda)

I then typed 'p' to print the partition table to the screen.
I then deleted all of my partitions except for the NTFS partitions (for windows) and another for Dell, which is what I planned to do with gparted. I think I typed 'd' to do this, then entered a number which represented the partition I wanted to delete.

I then typed 'w' to save the updated partition table to the disk, closed the terminal window and ran the gparted program again by double-clicking on the icon.

9 Reply by skingston

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Re: Why doesn't the live cd show any of my existing partitions?

If your problem is like mine, just running fdisk /dev/(whatever for your drive is) and typing 'w' will probably fix it, but type 'p' first to make sure it looks correct.

10 Reply by ysminstru (edited by ysminstru 2007-04-23 09:14:30)

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Re: Why doesn't the live cd show any of my existing partitions?

Hello friends..
my problem is exactly same as that of u but not getting resolved with what you did...
i typed fdisk  /dev/sda  then did what u did.. except deleting any partition (bec i am not sure which is imp and which isnt.. n i dont want to loose my original dell setups...).....  but still shows total 74 Gb as unallocated space.... n other partitions...

here goes description of my prob....

Note: I resized my first OS drive using GParted-Livecd 0.3.4. and now when i boot again from GParted CD it shows only one partiotion of 74GB and all other partitions or drives are not shown...

i bought new dell notebook PC n it has 80gb SATA hdd... since there was only one main drive of OS and one recovery drive i resized the OS drive and created unallocated space, 40GB to store my data.
now when i try to format unallocated drive or create partition in it.. it says that it cannot create more than 4 drives on one hdd...
in disk management it shows total 4 partitions.
1= 86MB Simple Basic-ESIA configuration , this is not visible in windows explorer
2= 10GB Simple basic NTFS primary partition for Recovery.this is visible in windows explorer
3= 21.35GB simple basic NTFS , primary boot.. for OS , VISTA homeedition premium. this is visible in windows explorer.
4=2Gb Simple basic Primary Partition, this is not visible in windows explorer
5= 41GB unallocated space, this is not visible in windows explorer
now when i try to format or create new volume 5th place i.e 41Gb unallocated space , it initially said there cannot be more than 4 primary drives etc...... then when i tried to create again simple volume it says " it may convert current disk to dynamic disk..... by doing so you will not be able to boot from anyother OS bla bala..."

can somebody tell me how can i bring my unallocated to use without deleting entire disk system n losing my data and OS?

thanks in advance..

regards
yusuf