Corrupted partition table/drive

[J Merritt]

I have a machine with three fixed disks:
hda = Windows XP (40 gb)
hdb = (see below) (60 gb)
hdc = ext2 partition for data storage (30 gb)

hdb is the disk I'm having serious problems with. Before, the disk had several partitions on it. I am not sure how many primary or secondary partitions there were, although all of them were Linux partitions.

My goal was to erase the first three partitions (because I never used them anymore) and combine them into one large ext2 partition for more data storage. (There were a total of five or six between the primary/extended.) Using the Ultimate Boot CD and XFDISK, I deleted the first three partitions, rebooted, and attempted to use the same utility to create one large ext2 partition. However, after it created the partition, XFDISK reported an error writing the partition data.

The result is that none of the hdb partitions are accessible. I cannot boot from any hdb partition and the partition utilities I've tried have not been able to “see” the hdb partitions. One partial exception is R-Linux, which I ran from a bootable CD. While it cannot read all of the partition data, it did see a partial file structure for the partitions while performing a scan of the drive, even though it was sketchy and the filesizes were not accurate.

I also attempted to use a gparted live CD, and it could not even see hdb (it does see the other two just fine). Using gpart on the command line returns:

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

When I open a terminal and type in 'gpart -C 29437,16,255 /dev/hdb' to try forcing it to recognize the drive configuration, it gives the same error.

The BIOS reports that the drive is there. It detects it automatically.

I've been trying to figure this out for awhile. So far, no real success with anything. Any suggestions are appreciated.


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[Matthew K Poer]

Post by J Merritt
hda = Windows XP (40 gb)
hdb = (see below) (60 gb)
hdc = ext2 partition for data storage (30 gb)
hdb is the disk I'm having serious problems with. Before, the disk had
several partitions on it. I am not sure how many primary or secondary
partitions there were, although all of them were Linux partitions.
My goal was to erase the first three partitions (because I never used
them anymore) and combine them into one large ext2 partition for more
data storage. (There were a total of five or six between the
primary/extended.) Using the Ultimate Boot CD and XFDISK, I deleted
the first three partitions, rebooted, and attempted to use the same
utility to create one large ext2 partition. However, after it created
the partition, XFDISK reported an error writing the partition data.
The result is that none of the hdb partitions are accessible. I cannot
boot from any hdb partition and the partition utilities I've tried
have not been able to “see” the hdb partitions. One partial exception
is R-Linux, which I ran from a bootable CD. While it cannot read all
of the partition data, it did see a partial file structure for the
partitions while performing a scan of the drive, even though it was
sketchy and the filesizes were not accurate.
I also attempted to use a gparted live CD, and it could not even see
hdb (it does see the other two just fine). Using gpart on the command
'*** Fatal error: cannot get sector size on dev(/dev/hdb).'
When I open a terminal and type in 'gpart -C 29437,16,255 /dev/hdb' to
try forcing it to recognize the drive configuration, it gives the same
error.
The BIOS reports that the drive is there. It detects it automatically.
I've been trying to figure this out for awhile. So far, no real
success with anything. Any suggestions are appreciated.

If you're just trying to format/re-partition the drive, boot a Live cd
(knoppix or whatever) and run use parted or QTParted.
(don't partition or format if you want to keep any of the data. Data
recovery would be a different issue entirely, be warned.)

[Andrei Popescu]

Post by J Merritt
My goal was to erase the first three partitions (because I never used
them anymore) and combine them into one large ext2 partition for more
data storage. (There were a total of five or six between the
primary/extended.) Using the Ultimate Boot CD and XFDISK, I deleted
the first three partitions, rebooted, and attempted to use the same
utility to create one large ext2 partition. However, after it created
the partition, XFDISK reported an error writing the partition data.
The result is that none of the hdb partitions are accessible. I

Had similar trouble after erasing a partition with the Windows
partitioner. I used testdisk
(http://www.cgsecurity.org/wiki/TestDisk) and managed to recover
everything, but YMMV, do it on your own risk, ....

Beware that usage (at least for me) was not very intuitive. I was
missing only one partition. On the first run I managed to recover it,
but lost all others due to misunderstanding the interface. I managed
to recover all of them on the second run though.

HTH,
Andrei