Re: Corrupted partition table/drive
On Wed, 2007-03-14 at 13:27 -0700, J Merritt wrote:
> I have a machine with three fixed disks:
> hda = Windows XP (40 gb)
> hdb = (see below) (60 gb)
> hdc = ext2 partition for data storage (30 gb)
>
> hdb is the disk I'm having serious problems with. Before, the disk had
> several partitions on it. I am not sure how many primary or secondary
> partitions there were, although all of them were Linux partitions.
>
> My goal was to erase the first three partitions (because I never used
> them anymore) and combine them into one large ext2 partition for more
> data storage. (There were a total of five or six between the
> primary/extended.) Using the Ultimate Boot CD and XFDISK, I deleted
> the first three partitions, rebooted, and attempted to use the same
> utility to create one large ext2 partition. However, after it created
> the partition, XFDISK reported an error writing the partition data.
>
> The result is that none of the hdb partitions are accessible. I cannot
> boot from any hdb partition and the partition utilities I've tried
> have not been able to “see” the hdb partitions. One partial exception
> is R-Linux, which I ran from a bootable CD. While it cannot read all
> of the partition data, it did see a partial file structure for the
> partitions while performing a scan of the drive, even though it was
> sketchy and the filesizes were not accurate.
>
> I also attempted to use a gparted live CD, and it could not even see
> hdb (it does see the other two just fine). Using gpart on the command
> line returns:
>
> '*** Fatal error: cannot get sector size on dev(/dev/hdb).'
>
> When I open a terminal and type in 'gpart -C 29437,16,255 /dev/hdb' to
> try forcing it to recognize the drive configuration, it gives the same
> error.
>
> The BIOS reports that the drive is there. It detects it automatically.
>
> I've been trying to figure this out for awhile. So far, no real
> success with anything. Any suggestions are appreciated.
>
If you're just trying to format/re-partition the drive, boot a Live cd
(knoppix or whatever) and run use parted or QTParted.
(don't partition or format if you want to keep any of the data. Data
recovery would be a different issue entirely, be warned.)
--
Matthew K Poer
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