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Topic: GParted liveCD - version differences

Good day everybody.
Thank you for providing the program and even more for reading all the (flooding) messages regarding its operation.
I ran across an issue that I believe it is worth sharing.
In all cases mentioned below I used the liveCD, i486 version of the program.
-The problem: GParted 0.17.0-4 refuses to recognise a hard disk (dev/sda), working endlessly and giving the message “searching /dev/sda partitions” at the status line. The rest of the liveCD environment works fine, you can switch off the machine from the provided menu.
-The peculiar thing: The problem exists with Gparted 0.17.0-4 (where I noticed it first) and persists on GParted 0.18.0-1. Nevertheless, the problem is not present on version 0.14.1-6. Using the latter version I can access and operate on the disk. (These are the versions I checked.)

The disk in question comes from a Dell notebook and using the GParted 0.18.0-1 liveCD (on which GParted stalls and does not recognise the disk), and from a command prompt, I can obtain the following information:
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user@debian:~$ sudo fdisk –l -u
Disk /dev/sda: 160.0 GB, 160040803840 bytes
255 heads, 63 sectors/track, 19457 cylinders, total 312579695 sectors
Units = sectors of 1 * 512 = 512 bytes
Sector size (logical/physical): 512 bytes / 512 bytes
I/O size (minimum/optimal): 512 bytes / 512 bytes
Disk identifier: 0x9b948cd7

   Device Boot      Start         End      Blocks   Id  System
/dev/sda1              63      224909      112423+  de  Dell Utility
/dev/sda2   *      225280   307333119   153553920    7  HPFS/NTFS/exFAT
/dev/sda4       307333120   312578047     2622464    f  W95 Ext'd (LBA)
/dev/sda5       307335168   312578047     2621440   dd  Unknown
--------------------------------
and
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user@debian:~$ sudo parted /dev/sda unit s print
Model: ATA ST9160821AS (scsi)
Disk /dev/sda: 312579695s
Sector size (logical/physical): 512B/512B
Partition Table: msdos

Number  Start       End         Size        Type      File system  Flags
1      63s         224909s     224847s     primary   fat16        diag
2      225280s     307333119s  307107840s  primary   ntfs         boot
4      307333120s  312578047s  5244928s    extended               lba
5      307335168s  312578047s  5242880s    logical   fat32
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I hope that all these are clear.
Thank you for all your actions and efforts.

PS
The problem is not machine specific. I connected the disk to a desktop machine and I obtained exactly the same behavioural differences between the 0.14.1-6 and the later versions.

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Re: GParted liveCD - version differences

We have prior reports of this problem with very fragmented FAT16 and FAT32 partitions.  One work-around is to defragment the FAT16 or FAT32 file system.

See Bug 569921 - dosfsck -n delays device scan

The challenge faced by GParted is to determine how much of the file system is actually used.  This information is needed for resizing the partition.  Unfortunately with fragmented FAT16 or FAT32 file systems, the dosfsck command takes a long time to determine this information.

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Re: GParted liveCD - version differences

Thank you for the explanation.
You can mark it as "solved".
Thank you.