Guest caslca Posted November 6, 2002 Report Share Posted November 6, 2002 Yeah, that sucks. here's the deal: This hapened on both my laptop and desktop - laptop(1.1 PIII 256SDRAM) has winXP(ntfs), 9.0(ext3) and 1 fat32 partition. desktop(1.8 AMD 512DDR): Dual boot winXP(NTFS) and 9.0(ext3) have additional 3 FAT32 partitions. On both computers i have it setup so that all partitions are automounted to /mnt on startup; ntfs in readonly mode. On both puters using the 9.0 for a while (like 1-2hrs) and manipulating files off the fat32 partitions, that is deleting,moving, reading creating. After that period, i reboot the computer and the 9.0 won't start. After booting in winXP, i scan all drives and it turns out one of my fat32 part in gone. Barely managed to recover it (shows as unformated space). i repeat again: same thing happened on both my laptop and desktop. I've been using RedHat 8.0 eversince (2 weeks ) and so far not a hiccup. Now, i understand the spirit of having a free OS and all that, but WHAT THE *#&$. I have nearly lost about 2 years worth of projects . If anyone has any suggestions, or experiences the same thing please do share. I'd like to help out with isolating this severe bug, so please also let me know where i can report that. btw i use the free download version which has no techsupport. thanks for reading Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Guest flyboy_2 Posted November 6, 2002 Report Share Posted November 6, 2002 Jeez! That really does suck! I tried Redhat a while back but did not have much luck in terms of it recognizing hardware and that sort of thing. It was also my first kick at Linux and I didn't find it to be all that intuitive or user friendly, but then I didn't give it much of a look I suppose. At least I didn't have it wipe out a partition though! I've since removed it, and I just downloaded the 3 Mardrake ISO's but haven't tried them yet. I thought I'd give Mandrake a try because I hear it's a little more user friendly than Redhat. Maybe I will keep my eye on this board and see who else gets their partitions erased before I begin! Yikes! :( Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
DragonMage Posted November 7, 2002 Report Share Posted November 7, 2002 Hmm.. that bug never happened to me in all these years of using mandrake, from 8.0 to 9.0. I have a feeling that it is one of those once in a blue moon kind of thing. I mean, it must be a linux thing, not just a mandrake problem because that thing can happen to anyone. Incidentally, once I brought my harddisk from Austin to SF to install in another computer. I don't know what happened, but the hard drive got tons of errors when installed to that other computer, and as a result, I lost 5 gigs worth of mp3 downloaded back during the golden age of napster. That teaches me to backup my data to something more substantial, like CDRs. That computer uses win2k btw, so I figure it's not just linux that has this type of problems. (Yes, the HD is fine hardware wise.. in fact.. I am using it right now) BTW, did you partition the fat32 partition using dos/windows fdisk? If that is true, I think that's the problem. I found out that dos fdisk partition the disk incorrectly, dunno why. I always lost my partition data if I install an OS (no matter what kind, win2k, win98 or linux) if I use windows to partition it sooner or later. But if I use linux fdisk or partition magic, nothing happens for ages. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Ixthusdan Posted November 7, 2002 Report Share Posted November 7, 2002 The only time I ever lost a partition was from an fdisk setup. When the linux partitioning tool did not recognize the partition, I quit the install and managed to recover key files. Since then I have only used the Linux partioning tool and have never lost data. I have been dual booting since 7.0. I always use expert install so that I can control what is happening. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Guest caslca Posted November 7, 2002 Report Share Posted November 7, 2002 partitions in all cases are created using Partition Magic 8.0 BEFORE the instalation of linux. In Linux i just mount them. And i've never had that problem with Windows or other OS's i used(RH7.3, RH8.0 and MDK8.1). Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Counterspy Posted November 8, 2002 Report Share Posted November 8, 2002 Don't jump to the conclusion that they are gone. It may be the case that they are still there but not picked up by either Windows or Linux. Try running CFdisk or SFDisk from Linux an post the output here. All ot takes is one incorrect byte to make them invisible, a mistake that PM could make. It would also help to take us through the exact steps you took when you set it up for install and what you did during the install. Try not to write to this drive until all possibilities are explored. There is also a utility called Partinfo in your PM directory which will give you useful information about your partitions. Counterspy Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Guest caslca Posted November 8, 2002 Report Share Posted November 8, 2002 The problem here is not about my data - i've managed to recover it. The problem IS that Mandrake is ****ing up my fat32 partitions systematically, and i don't know what to do about it. I can't file a support issue cause i'm not a paying user. I'd love to use the OS but i can't, so i'm looking for advice on what to do about the issue, where/how to report it and if anyone else had a similar experience Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
pmpatrick Posted November 8, 2002 Report Share Posted November 8, 2002 Try checking your partitions in Partition Magic. I've noticed that whenever I've installed either Red Hat or Mandrake on partitions created and formated in Partition Magic, if I run Partition Magic again errors are reported re the partition table, usually two per partition touched by the Linux install. It's a popup window that you will see when you run Partition Magic. It asks if you want to correct the errors; I usually say yes and have no problems afterwards. Also, check your entry in /etc/fstab for the windows partition that your having trouble with. Here's what mine looks like and I've had no problems:/dev/hde1 /mnt/win_c vfat iocharset=iso8859-1,codepage=850,umask=0 0 0 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
mtweidmann Posted November 8, 2002 Report Share Posted November 8, 2002 Windows doesn't see a FAT32 partiton if there are Linux partitions in the way. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Guest caslca Posted November 9, 2002 Report Share Posted November 9, 2002 well, real thanks for all the replies here, i mean it. but you people are not hearing me. when i say that the partition is corrupted i mean it IS corrupted, and it is so beyond repair!!! I checked them with about 5 diff utilities. After checking it, no utility was able to repair the partition so i used a low level recovery program to recover my data. BUT THIS IS NOT THE POINT HERE. I do not want advice on how to fix my partition. i want advice on how to fix mandrake9.0 so that it doesn't **** up with my partitions. And no, winXP has no problems whatsoever seeing a FAT32 partition when there is an ext3 partition too. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Guest amaarse Posted November 9, 2002 Report Share Posted November 9, 2002 another one not hearing you and just talking... I don't have this partitionong problem, but in my system Mandrake 9.0 does not work correctly together with a UDMA 66 disk with UDMA on. I don't have a clue if this is really related to your problem, but I could imagine that if information is written to your harddrive incorrectly, accidents happen. 9.0 has problems! If you're interested, take a look at http://www.mandrakeusers.org/viewtopic.php?t=870 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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