Invalid Partition Table

[kostovnet]

Hello!

I've just made a fresh install of Gutsy on my PC.

A few hours later, when I booted the PC again I had an "Invalid Partition Table" error appearing even before GRUB (I've done nothing special during my last session... changing icon themes/wallpapers ...etc).

I've tried to "see" my hard disk using qparted from Kubuntu's live cd, however it thinks that my HDD has no partitions on it. (it shows an empty hda)

I also had an old Win XP Pro cd. I've taken the setup of windows to the step where it detects all partitions on my hard disk - it can still detect 3 NTFS partitions and 2 Unknown (the ext3 and the linux swap) with proper free space/size...

... What can I do to try to restore my partition table ?

=== UPDATE ===

Ok, atleast I fixed the network with the PC so I can paste konsole output.
From Fdisk I have:

Disk /dev/hda: 100.0 GB, 100030242816 bytes
16 heads, 63 sectors/track, 193821 cylinders
Units = cylinders of 1008 * 512 = 516096 bytes
Disk identifier: 0xdfbadfba

  Device Boot   Start     End   Blocks  Id System
/dev/hda1  *      1   193816  97683202  f W95 Ext'd (LBA)
Partition 1 does not end on cylinder boundary.
/dev/hda2  *    70685   102187  15877120  7 HPFS/NTFS
Partition 2 does not end on cylinder boundary.
/dev/hda5        1    68739  34644079  7 HPFS/NTFS
/dev/hda6      68739    70683   979933+ 82 Linux swap / Solaris
/dev/hda7     102191   179743  39086680+  7 HPFS/NTFS
/dev/hda8     179744   193816   7092729  7 HPFS/NTFS

Command (m for help): v

Partition 2 does not end on cylinder boundary.
Partition 2: head 182 greater than maximum 16
Partition 5: head 255 greater than maximum 16
Partition 6: head 255 greater than maximum 16
Partition 7: head 253 greater than maximum 16
10479 unallocated sectors

$ sudo sfdisk -l -uS /dev/hda

Disk /dev/hda: 193821 cylinders, 16 heads, 63 sectors/track
Warning: extended partition does not start at a cylinder boundary.
DOS and Linux will interpret the contents differently.
Units = sectors of 512 bytes, counting from 0

  Device Boot  Start    End  #sectors Id System
/dev/hda1  *    124 195366527 195366404  f W95 Ext'd (LBA)
        end: (c,h,s) expected (1023,15,63) found (1023,0,63)
/dev/hda2  * 71249920 103004159  31754240  7 HPFS/NTFS
        start: (c,h,s) expected (1023,15,63) found (1023,26,8)
        end: (c,h,s) expected (1023,15,63) found (1023,181,42)
/dev/hda3       0     -     0  0 Empty
/dev/hda4       0     -     0  0 Empty
/dev/hda5      187 69288344  69288158  7 HPFS/NTFS
        end: (c,h,s) expected (1023,15,63) found (1023,254,63)
/dev/hda6   69288408 71248274  1959867 82 Linux swap / Solaris
        start: (c,h,s) expected (1023,15,63) found (1023,1,1)
        end: (c,h,s) expected (1023,15,63) found (1023,254,63)
/dev/hda7   103007583 181180943  78173361  7 HPFS/NTFS
        start: (c,h,s) expected (1023,15,63) found (1023,236,1)
        end: (c,h,s) expected (1023,15,63) found (1023,252,63)
/dev/hda8   181181070 195366527  14185458  7 HPFS/NTFS
        start: (c,h,s) expected (1023,15,63) found (1023,0,1)
        end: (c,h,s) expected (1023,15,63) found (1023,0,63)

Then I tried resotring the partition table with parted

(parted) unit s
(parted) rescue 103007583 181180943
Error: Can't have overlapping partitions.
(parted) rescue 124 195366527
Error: Can't have overlapping partitions.

I'm not very proficient when it comes to cylinders .. sectors etc. I only need a way to extract the data contained in hda5, hda7 and hda8 .. Then I will surely reformat my entire disk since I wanted for a long time to change the partition configuration.

[juantovarm]

Re: Invalid Partition Table

you can download Knoppix from http://www.knoppix.org/ it's a live cd with no install, run it, it will read all your drives even windows, then you can copy everything you have in your disks onto the media of your choice