Re: Known Windows 98 and Linux partition problems

["Richard E. Hawkins" <hawk@hawkins.cba.uni.edu>]

noah noted,
> As you can imagine, I quickly ran out of space on the Win98 partition, so,
> using Linux's fdisk, I created a new FAT partition.  Then I booted to
> Win98 and formatted this new partition.  Windows was fine with this.
> However...

> When I rebooted to Linux, all the logical partitions were gone, and the
> extended partition had really screwed up attributes.  ARGH!  I was able to
> use the gpart program to scan the disk for ext2 superblocks and rescue a
> couple of the partitions, but not all of them.  So, it seems to me that
> Win98 must have all its partitions in place and formatted before Linux is
> installed...I think.  Maybe Win98 will always screw up extended
> partitions, not just when it's used to format them.

I'vehad a couple of catastrophesthat have hammered partition tables.  
I've found that if I create new partitions in the exact same places, I 
get my data back.  It's useful to have an fdisk printout of your 
configuration around.

Also, if you partitioned with cfdisk during setup, you may need to 
use it to create those partitions--I've seen sligthly different
behavior from them, and haven't been always been able to recreate cfdisk
partitions with fdisk

rick

--