gpart help?

**OpenIntro** · 04-03-2005, 07:33 PM

I am attempting to run gpart via Knoppix 3.7 and honestly have no idea what I am actually doing.

I have gone to the RUN COMMAND line and said gpart -c /dev/hda1, but this just opens up a Terminal window that is blank and says FINISHED at the top. Doesn't seem like it is doing anything.

I have 1 80gb hard drive that has a C and D drive on it (2 partitions I guess)....is there a gpart tutorial anywhere? Or can anyone lend some gpart knowledge? I have looked through the man gpart, but hasn't really enlightened me as of yet

**fingers99** · 04-03-2005, 08:19 PM

We really need to know what you're trying to do with gpart.

For example, since you use gpart in order to check a partition table (and re-write it),

gpart /dev/hda

would seem a better choice.

http://www.stud.uni-hannover.de/user/76201/gpart/

has the author's description, but, essentially, you run gpart /dev/hda to check the partitions. If the check is consistent, use gpart gpart -W /dev/hda /dev/hda

**OpenIntro** · 04-03-2005, 08:47 PM

thanks for the reply....i apologize for the double post....

I have a hard drive that seems to have been wiped out or crashed....when I boot it up, all I get is OPERATING SYSTEM NOT FOUND. More than anything, I am just trying to recover the data that is on the hard drive, and then probably replace the hard drive. Harry Kuhman suggested that I run gpart to see if we can recover the partition table, since when I boot up Knoppix, it doesn't seem to be picking up my hard drive.

I just tried gpart /dev/hda

and I get:

*** Fatal error: open(/dev/hda): Permission denied.

**fingers99** · 04-03-2005, 08:55 PM

Try

sudo gpart /dev/hda

**OpenIntro** · 04-03-2005, 09:00 PM

When I run that WITHOUT clicking the Terminal Window option, it does nothing. When I do check that option, I get:

*** Fatal error: open(/dev/hda): No such device or address.

**OpenIntro** · 04-04-2005, 04:54 AM

Also, if I run....

sudo gpart /dev/hdc (which I tried since it was the C drive?), I get:

*** Fatal error: cannot get sector size on dev(/dev/hdc).

**Harry Kuhman** · 04-04-2005, 05:11 AM

Originally Posted by OpenIntro

Also, if I run.... sudo gpart /dev/hdc (which I tried since it was the C drive?)....

No, it's not the C drive. It's not even the C drive under XP. it's both C and D Partitions under XP, but that's not the same as saying which drive it is (I have D F and G partitions on my second drive, for example) It's the first drive, and Linux refers to the first drive on a normal IDE interface as hda. It refers to the partitions on hda as hda1, hda2, hda5 (the first logical partition in an extended partition) and so on. So what you want to be scanning with gpart is hda. If you can't run gpart against it you might want to consider the chance that the drive just isn't working. But I would test that theory with some software other than Knoppix before I sent the hard drive to someone and told them to overcharge me to extract data from it. You might even want to run gpart on another computer to see how it normally works.

**OpenIntro** · 04-04-2005, 05:35 AM

So it's not that I'm doing something wrong with what I am typing? Or do I have to set something up first? The first time, I got permission denied. I have listened when I power up and it sounds like the disks are spinning normally....

**Harry Kuhman** · 04-04-2005, 06:28 AM

Originally Posted by OpenIntro

So it's not that I'm doing something wrong with what I am typing? Or do I have to set something up first? The first time, I got permission denied. I have listened when I power up and it sounds like the disks are spinning normally....

I don't know what's happening for you. The very first time I actually ran gpart was just now, I opened a shell and typed:
sudo gpart /dev/hda
and it made a correct evaluation of a hard disk I have as the first disk on my primary IDE controler. It also was able to do the same with a hard disk that I have as the secondary on my second IDE controler with sudo gpart /dev/hdd. It is also very handy to do a sudo gpart -v /dev/hda, which will dump out what is in the current partition table. This may go a long way in helping understand what happened.