Re: Enlarging FAT Partition (in use)
High,
On Tue, 7 Aug 2001, Antonio Alberto Lobato wrote:
>
> Hello !
>
> What must I to do to enlarge a FAT partition in use
> (preserving their datas) to all HD ?
>
> I desinstalled Linux from the machine of the my friend and I`d
> like to restore it HD partition configuration, Windows in all HD.
>
Depends on how you shrunk it. I think that this will help:
but USE AT YOUR OWN RISK. This will only work when windoze is the first
partition and the rest is Linux.
use fdisk (the Linux one, the DOS one will mess up your harddisk this
way, you can use the one on the installation disk if there is no
Linux left). Write down the current configuration. Then delete the Linux
partitions AS WELL AS the windoze one. I have done this lots of
time and the data on the partition does not change. Now add a new
partition, starting at the beginning of the old windoze one and ending at
the end of the last linux one. So, in this case:
Device Boot Start End Blocks Id System
/dev/sda1 1 537 4313421 83 Linux
/dev/sda2 538 550 104422+ 82 Linux swap
/dev/sda3 551 554 32130 83 Linux
the new /dev/sda1 would start at 1 and end at 554. Now change the
drivetype to the original windoze one (I do not know, look at the Id of
your written down table) and write the data to the disk.
If all went ok, you have now a harddisk with one big windoze partition.
Try to boot with it. If it boots, all is still fine, if it doesn't, get
back to fdisk and restore the old information you have written down.
The big problem is that the FAT still 'thinks' it is on a smaller
partition. I do not know how I solved this. I think I ran scandisk and
defrag, hoping that one would realize that the data in the FAT does not
match the MBR partition size. Additionally, you could use other disk
rescue software.
BTW, you can get rid of LILO by running the DOS' fdisk with: fdisk /MBR
Remember that you should have made a backup anyway. Perhaps it is not
possible to make the FAT bigger, so you will still be stuck with a smaller
partition. The only solution then is just to make a good backup and format
the disk. I believe that msbackup.exe is a pretty good program. Use that,
format, reinstall windoze to have msbackup.exe back and restore the
archive. I have walked this road once without problems.
Succes,
Sebastiaan
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