From owner-freebsd-questions Sat Sep 29 19:17:12 2001 Delivered-To: freebsd-questions@freebsd.org Received: from Mail6.nc.rr.com (fe6.southeast.rr.com [24.93.67.53]) by hub.freebsd.org (Postfix) with ESMTP id 4B2D837B40A for ; Sat, 29 Sep 2001 19:17:08 -0700 (PDT) Received: from i8k.babbleon.org ([66.57.85.154]) by Mail6.nc.rr.com with Microsoft SMTPSVC(5.5.1877.687.68); Sat, 29 Sep 2001 10:18:10 -0400 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="iso-8859-1" From: Brian T.Schellenberger To: walton@digger.net, questions@FreeBSD.ORG Subject: Re: Partition table problem Date: Sat, 29 Sep 2001 10:18:06 -0400 X-Mailer: KMail [version 1.2] References: <20010929125042.33374.qmail@aerre.pair.com> In-Reply-To: <20010929125042.33374.qmail@aerre.pair.com> MIME-Version: 1.0 Message-Id: <01092910180604.20245@i8k.babbleon.org> Content-Transfer-Encoding: 8bit Sender: owner-freebsd-questions@FreeBSD.ORG Precedence: bulk List-ID: List-Archive: (Web Archive) List-Help: (List Instructions) List-Subscribe: List-Unsubscribe: X-Loop: FreeBSD.ORG On Saturday 29 September 2001 08:50, walton@digger.net wrote: > Ok, I need some help from someone who is EXTREMELY familiar with > partition tables, DOS partitions (esp. extended), and the FreeBSD > partition tools (fdisk and the partition editor in sysinstall). I don't know that I'm expert, but I've screwed up my system enough that I've actually done this sort of thing before. > At that point, I discovered that the partition editor had rewritten > the partition table (even though it was unnecessary), and had marked > the 4th (formerly extended DOS) partition as unused!! It did not > alter the partition offsets or sizes (as far as I can tell), so no > data should be lost, but I am now unable to access that partition. > > What I need to know is how I can SAFELY edit that entry in the > partition table to convert it from unused back into an extended DOS > partition, with a single logical drive in it. Any use of DOS fdisk > is out of the question, since that will wipe the partition. This is not my experience, but I'd hate to give you advice that backfires. > I suspect > I could use the partition editor to create a partition there > (type number?), but I don't know for sure that is safe, and what about > the logical drive? It's fdisk that you want to use, not the label editor. I'm not quite sure what you mean by the partition editor. > Ok, experts... Dazzle me with your brilliance! :) The one thing I know with absolute certainty is that if you can boot into a Linux rescue environment and use the Linux fdisk, you'll be able to safely fix it by changing the type (if it has one) or "creating" it (if it doesn't). I like FreeBSD as an O/S better, but Linux is the most cooperative O/S available on the PC. It "plays nice" with every other O/S to a degree that FreeBSD and Windows don't, and its fdisk understand IDE drives better than FreeBSDs. So I'd recommend getting a Linux boot disk (rescue or install) and using it to bring up a Linux shell, and using the Linux fdisk. Then if you recreate the partitions as they were before, the data will still all be intact. This I know from experience. > > Thanks, > Dave > > . > > To Unsubscribe: send mail to majordomo@FreeBSD.org > with "unsubscribe freebsd-questions" in the body of the message -- Brian T. Schellenberger . . . . . . . bts@wnt.sas.com (work) Brian, the man from Babble-On . . . . bts@babbleon.org (personal) http://www.babbleon.org --------------------> Free Dmitry Sklyarov! <------------------------- http://www.eff.org http://www.programming-freedom.org To Unsubscribe: send mail to majordomo@FreeBSD.org with "unsubscribe freebsd-questions" in the body of the message