I had noticed a while ago that there was something screwy with my partition table. but my computer was still booting fine. i finally got around to trying to fix it last night. i was just trying out different tools (gpart, testdisk, etc) but i did not think i had commited any changes. at any rate i wake up thismorning, turn on the computer, bios comes up, then i get nothing but a blinking cursor (text cursor, not mouse cursor).
time for the knoppix cd,
in knoppix, i run testdisk and get
Code:
TestDisk 4.0, Data Recovery Utility, April 3 2002
Christophe GRENIER <grenier@cgsecurity.org>
http://www.cgsecurity.org
Disk /dev/hda - CHS 2432 255 63 - 19077 MB
Check current partition structure
1 P hid. FAT32 2 1 1 573 254 63 9189117 [HARDDRIVE]
2 E extended LBA 1090 0 1 2431 254 63 21559230
3 P Linux ext2fs 574 0 1 1089 254 63 8289540 [/]
4 * Linux ext2fs 0 1 1 4 21 13 65533
Bad sector count.
Quit
*=Primary bootable P=Primary L=Logical E=Extended D=Deleted
Quit this section
so then i press enter and it goes to the next screen where it guesses a partition table
Code:
TestDisk 4.0, Data Recovery Utility, April 3 2002
Christophe GRENIER <grenier@cgsecurity.org>
http://www.cgsecurity.org
Disk /dev/hda - CHS 2432 255 63 - 19077 MB
Use arrow keys to change partition characteristics (see below)
Press the ENTER key to continue
Partition Start End Size
D Linux ext2fs 0 1 1 1 254 63 32067 [/boot]
D FAT32 2 1 1 573 254 63 9189117 [HARDDRIVE]
D Linux ext2fs 574 0 1 1089 254 63 8289540 [/]
D Linux Swap 1090 0 1 1125 254 63 578340
D FAT32 1126 1 1 2431 254 63 20980827 [HARDDRIVE 2]
Structure: Ok Press 'T' key to change partition type, 'P' to list files
*=Primary bootable P=Primary L=Logical E=Extended D=Deleted
EXT3 Sparse superblock Recover
s
so i know from (my brain) memory that the structure of my harddrive is this:
Code:
in order of physically appearing first:
1) hda4 (15Mb of ext3) [ /boot ]
2) hda1 (4.4Gb of vfat) [ windows partiton ]
3) hda3 ( 3.9Gb of ext3) [ / (Fedora core 1)]
4) ----->Extended hda2
5) hda5 (282-some-odd-Mb) [ linux swap ]
6) hda6 (10Gb of vfat) [ my drive of random data ]
so i can change them so that (*=Primary bootable P=Primary L=Logical E=Extended D=Deleted)
/boot is *
HARDDRIVE is P
/ is P
and HARDRIVE 2 is L
but for swap i can only choose between *, P and D even though it is L
i was going to delete windows soon anyways so i have the option of using this partition table i created which the program says is ok but
it is different from my original table:
Code:
Disk /dev/hda - CHS 2432 255 63 - 19077 MB
Partition Start End Size
1 * Linux ext2fs 0 1 1 1 254 63 32067 [/boot]
2 P Linux ext2fs 574 0 1 1089 254 63 8289540 [/]
3 P Linux Swap 1090 0 1 1125 254 63 578340
4 E extended LBA 1126 0 1 2431 254 63 20980890
5 L FAT32 1126 1 1 2431 254 63 20980827 [HARDDRIVE 2]
is that bad or ok to do that?
edits: spellchecking gramar etc
).
