Partition tables and problems (QTparted)

[Alan]

Sorry if this isn't the place to ask but I was impressed with the advice I got the last time!

It's a bit of a long question but essentially I have a dodgy partition table which I would like to fix. Details below -


At the moment I am still a slave to windows but am trying to break free!!


System - PII350, 256MB Ram, Hard drives -40GB Western Digital as Primary master, 6.4GB Quantum fireball as primary slave.

Since installing my new HD (the western digital drive) I wanted to leave a little room for Linux in a dual boot. Partitions made with dos fdisk - C:6GB (primary, fat32, active with win98 installed) and F: (extended 22GB with logical drive 22GB fat32 to share with linux)

My problems started when I tried to install redhat9 and got an error message that "the partition table on /dev/hda is inconsistent......" The redhat installation suggested that it may be a BIOS problem but I have the latest BIOS available and the drive is set up to be accessed with LBA.

I found my Knoppix CD and booted away
QTParted gives me the following
dev/hda
01 /dev/hda-1 free 0.03MB 0.00 to 0.03
02 /dev/hda1 fat32 Active 5.86GB 0.03 to 5.86
03 /dev/hda2 extended 21.5GB 5.86 to 27.36
04 /dev/hda-1 free 0.03MB 5.86 to 5.86
05 /dev/hda5 fat32 21.50GB 5.86 to 27.36
06 /dev/hda-1 free 9.92GB 27.36 to 37.27


Now, to my untrained eye it looks like there are 2 unnecessary free disk partitions 01 and 04. If I look at my old 6.4GB disk with QT parted there are no small free areas so I guess windows doesn't need them (perhaps I'm wrong).

Is it safe to delete the free areas - and if so how?

Do I need to use QTparted to make a boot partition at the start of the drive for a Linux install or will that kill the windows installation?

Any help very gratefully received!!

Alan

[garyng]

The 'small partition' could be holding the extended partiton info so I am not sure if it is safe to 'delete' them.

What does fdisk or cfdisk tell you ? I am not familiar with qtparted. Or what is the output of

cat /proc/partitions

[Alan]

fdisk tells me there is a primary partition C: and one extended partition with a logical partition using all of the space E: (no indication of the spaces)

I agree that the free space could be holding partition information but if I look at my older drive (the 6.4GB Quantum) I get the same partition structure but no small free spaces with QTparted.

[garyng]

ah, I mean use the fdisk under linux.

[Alan]

I tried openning a shell prompt and typing fdisk /dev/hda but only got "unable to open /dev/hda"

As I am very much a novice it is probably because I am just trying to guess my way about.

How should I go about getting fdisk to work.
(getting anything out of qtparted was only through luck!)

[Alan]

sorry it was a root password problem

output from fdisk
dev/hda 40.0GB 40020664320
255 heads, 63 sectors/tracks 4865 cylinders
Units = cylinders of 16065 * 512= 8225280 bytes

boot start End Blocks Id
/dev/hda1 * 1 765 6144831 b Win95 FAT32
/dev/hda2 766 3571 22539195 f Win95 Etd (LBA)
.dev.hda5 766 3571 22539163+ b Win95 FAT32

Does this help?

I still can't see why I would get a "partition table inconsistent" warning.

I suspect that there will be a relatively simple work around but I would like to understand.

Thank you for the help so far - it is appreciated

Alan

[Alan]

the cat /proc/partitions gives
major minor #block name
8 0 1048575 sda
3 0 39082680 hda
3 1 6144831 hda1
3 2 1 hda2
3 5 22539163 hda5
3 64 6297480 hdb
3 65 2096451 hdb1
3 66 1 hdb2
3 69 4200966 hdb5



Alan

[garyng]

there isn't any extra partitions according to fdisk or /proc/partitions, they look pretty normal to me.