Hard disk buggered

[Bob Bobertson]

I have 2 hard disks, an 60gb which I use for Windows and an 80gb which I use for files and wanted to use for Linux. I partioned 60gb of the 80gb hard disk for Windows and left 20gb unformatted for Linux. I decided to use Mandrake 10.0, I put in the disk etc and selected 'partition free space', it said 'partitioning hard disk2' etc then I moved onto the next part of the installation which was a load of tick boxes where you can select what you want installing eg 'Gamestation'. During this my computer crashed and I had to reboot. Windows booted fine but when I went on Partition Magic the whole of disk2 was classified as 'BAD' and supposedly 0% of it was used. Very worried I went on My Computer and yet my 'F:' and 'G:' partitions were still there (which were on the now 'BAD' 80gb hard disk), I looked around on them and everything seemed fine, I can play the games which I installed on those partitions fine and on properties they still remain the size they origionally were. What I want to know is can I get back the 20gb of the disk I'm not using (without reformating the disk) and if not can I carry on using the hard disk as it is?

 

[montag451]

try ACRONIS Disk Director - have been hearing lately that this is less buggy then some of the later versions of PM.

only rumour though

 

[Uncle Bob]

Given that your Windows data and partitions are all still OK, I would imagine that Partition Magic is simply unable to make sense of the Linux partition as it's possible it has been left in an undefined state by the installation crashing part way through.

One comment; with older versions of Linux, the system partition had to be within the first 1024 cylinders of the disc (which would not be the case with how you were setting up your system). Not sure if this still applies to modern versions though

My advice: delete/format the partition using windows or dos. The Linux setup program should be capable of converting an exisiting FAT partition.

 

[Bob Bobertson]

Ok, thanks alot