wahur Posted December 9, 2006 Report Share Posted December 9, 2006 Hi! Been Mandrake user since 8.0 and really feel ashamed of making such a dumb mistake. But I really need your help recovering from it. I had Win98 installed on 20GB primary master (games only). 40GB primary slave had over the years of playing with multiple distros turned into a mess of about 10 partitions, many standing idle. About a month ago I started a new career as a freelance translator, so I had to make a usable tool of my computer. Plan was to install XP+MS Office+Trados CAT software on first disk, make a fat partition for sharing data between Win&Lin in the beginning of second disk and install brandnew Mandriva 2007 in the end of second disk. Here is where I made my mistake. Because second disk needed total repartitioning, I decided to install Mandriva first and use its partitioning tool for making new partitions. Everything went fine. Mandriva installed OK, everything worked. XP installed fine, except that it would not see the other disk. Or, rather, its device manager is aware of the disk and tells me its working fine, but Disk Manager cannot see it at all. I suppose the cause is something that Mandriva partitioner did. Now I wonder if there is a way to clear the second disk in the hopes that it becomes visible for XP again. Wahur, desperate, as big job is already waiting Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Ixthusdan Posted December 9, 2006 Report Share Posted December 9, 2006 Windows is not going to "see the other disk." It should see the fat partition as another drive letter, but not a disk. Can you see the fat partition on the Linux disk? Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
wahur Posted December 9, 2006 Author Report Share Posted December 9, 2006 Windows is not going to "see the other disk." It should see the fat partition as another drive letter, but not a disk. Can you see the fat partition on the Linux disk? Yes, as I said, Linux installation worked OK, saw all the partitions etc. All I can think of, is that Mandriva-created fat partition was somehow flawed, and Win would not recognize it as such. Wahur Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Ixthusdan Posted December 10, 2006 Report Share Posted December 10, 2006 The fat partition on the second disk is not recognized by windows? Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
wahur Posted December 10, 2006 Author Report Share Posted December 10, 2006 The fat partition on the second disk is not recognized by windows? Thats correct. As I said in my first post, disk is seen on hardware level, i.e. in Device Manager it is visible and reportedly works fine, but in a Disk Manager it is invisible, there is no second disk or partition, as though it does not exist at all. Also, when I tried to access it using XP Home Installation disk, it failed to find second disk or partition. Therefore it seems, that whatever I can do about it, must be done using Linux, either Mandriva or some live distro like Knoppix. One thing that comes to my mind is to try to bring the disk into some kind of "virgin state", deleting all the partitions and reformatting it, but I am not sure and would definitely need guidance for such operation. I know it sounds very much like solving Windows troubles in Linux forums ;) but in Win forums nobody had a clue at all, all I got was abuse about f..cking my box up using Linux Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Mhn Posted December 10, 2006 Report Share Posted December 10, 2006 Is the device manager where you assign different letter to partitions? Have you done that? Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
wahur Posted December 10, 2006 Author Report Share Posted December 10, 2006 Is the device manager where you assign different letter to partitions?Have you done that? No. Device Manager is the Win version of HardDrake. There the second drive is visible. Letters can be assigned to partitions in Disk Manager and there I cannot see neither the second disk nor any partitions on it. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Ixthusdan Posted December 10, 2006 Report Share Posted December 10, 2006 Is the fat partition recognized as a fat partition in Linux? Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
wahur Posted December 10, 2006 Author Report Share Posted December 10, 2006 (edited) OK, I have the problem solved, with one last question remaining. I downloaded Acronis Disk Director Suite trial version. This was able to see all the partitions just fine. Trial version is limited to making very small partitions only, so I made just one tiny FAT32 partition with it and assigned letter D: to it. Now, all of a sudden, but not quite unexpected, Disk Manager saw not only this new small D:, but also all the other partitions. Now I was able to delete the existing partitions and make needed partition. I will have to reinstall Linux, but this is a non-issue. Just one more question. Disk Manager can create only NTFS partitions. Now, last time I checked NTFS writing was experimental in Linux. What is the situation now? Could I used existing NTFS partition reliably for sharing data between Lin and Win? Or should I find now a way to turn this NTFS partition into a FAT32? Edited December 10, 2006 by wahur Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
scarecrow Posted December 10, 2006 Report Share Posted December 10, 2006 Simply use the gparted liveCD, which can create partitions of any kind, and it's free. NTFS writing in Linux is still "experimental", but nevertheless fast and reliable (ntfs-3g project). Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
wahur Posted December 12, 2006 Author Report Share Posted December 12, 2006 And no. The problem still stands unsolved despite my early optimism. Looks like the problem is following: As I said, to my knowledge this disk is approximately 40GB - Linux would see little more than 37 GB. Windows somehow cannot see approximately 5 last megabytes, different Windows tools report different disk sizes from 31,5 to 32,2GB If I create a fat partition using Win tools then it becomes visible. Disk Manager would also see Linux partitions, except for those that are located on the last missing 5GB. It would also complain about incorrect partition table and not being able to read lots of sectors when first accessing the disk. Now, when I installed Mandriva again, without even touching the fat partition I had created, obviously partition table was overwritten by Linux. Now if Windows tries to look at it, it will see that C,H,S numbers are "wrong", it decides the table is faulty and it will not even look inside. D: partition becomes invisible again. How to resolve that issue, i have no clue. Maybe I should start messing with BIOS, as some other sources suggest, but as I already started with a big translation job (fortunately can do it Linux-only), I will probably not risk the health of my computer before mid-January when its done and out. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
tyme Posted December 12, 2006 Report Share Posted December 12, 2006 be sure there aren't any bad sectors on your hard drive...if you haven't checked for that already. other than that, i dunno, windows is retarded when it comes to partitions :unsure: Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
scarecrow Posted December 12, 2006 Report Share Posted December 12, 2006 Windows do not create FAT32 partitions larger than 32GB... and this is one of the few wise things they are doing. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
tyme Posted December 12, 2006 Report Share Posted December 12, 2006 Windows do not create FAT32 partitions larger than 32GB... and this is one of the few wise things they are doing.Ok, I don't really want to argue, but there's no harm in having a FAT32 partition larger than 32GB. I have had several without an performance degradation, lose of data, or abnormal fragmentation issues. In theory, it could be a problem to have a FAT32 larger than 32GB, but in practice it rarely - if ever - causes any problems. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
wahur Posted December 12, 2006 Author Report Share Posted December 12, 2006 I wonder how is this all relevant? Fat partition we are talkin' about is smaller than 30GB. Bad sectors - would it be possible that windows cannot see "behind" bad sectors? Otherwise this would not be relevant as well - probably. Cause I currently have most of my Linux system installed on those invisible 5GB and everything works just fine... This part of disk is not bad, just invisible to Win :D Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Recommended Posts
Join the conversation
You can post now and register later. If you have an account, sign in now to post with your account.
Note: Your post will require moderator approval before it will be visible.