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**thedevilsjester** · Nov 23, 2006, 11:18 AM

Re: Kubuntu/XP disk partition Question

The first thing you need to do, is stop thinking windows. Every warning or error message is not always because of a bug or no drivers installed. The error you are getting about the drives not being mounted yet, just means that you have not chosen to mount those drives.

There is a quickie way to do this (if its just a onetimeshot that you want to get something off of your windows drive), or a more permanent way if its going to be a regular deal.

First the quickie way, assuming your windows partition is Primary Master (hda) first partition (1) :

Code:

sudo mkdir /mnt/windows
sudo mount /dev/hda1 /mnt/windows

And then just goto the /mnt/windows directory, and viola.

The more permanent way is to edit your /etc/fstab file and give it the proper entry for your windows drive. Add something like the following to your fstab (this is assuming the same hda1 and fat32, there are different options if you are using ntfs)

Code:

/dev/hda1    /mnt/windows   vfat  user,noauto  0   0

There are many examples of both ways if you search the forums.

As for your partition disappearing, without more information I would say that you probably let linux take over that empty space/partition during its install. Linux distributions usually create two or three partitions for its installation (swap, boot, and everything else). if you open GTParted in linux you can see the layout of your harddrive.

**podunk** · Nov 24, 2006, 07:13 AM

Re: Kubuntu/XP disk partition Question

If you haven't done a bunch of file writing there is a chance to recover the partition and it's data.

One thing you could do is download the partimage boot disk and make an image of the disk. It has some utilities to recover corrupt partitions (Microsoft corrupts things, in Linux they are broken. Enough said! )
http://partimage.org/Main_Page

On the Partimage page at the bottom is a link to a rescue CD which has a lot of recovery tools on it.

In fact, I think the first thing I would do is make an image of the drive. If you can't recover the partition table you can send the image off. Another slim chance is you can restore the image to a different partition and then try to recover files once you have a good Linux install.

A couple of people have had good luck with this:
http://www.cgsecurity.org/wiki/TestDisk

**Skyguy** · Nov 25, 2006, 07:21 PM

Re: Kubuntu/XP disk partition Question

Before going back into Linux, here is some partition and volume info I got from Windows:

Volume ### Ltr Label Fs Type Size Info
---------- --- ----------- ----- ---------- ------- --------
Volume 0 E CD-ROM 0 B
Volume 1 F DVD-ROM 0 B
Volume 2 C MY NEW HOME NTFS Partition 14 GB System
Volume 3 D HOPE NTFS Partition 32 GB
Volume 4 G Partition 8 GB
Volume 5 H MUSIC N PIC NTFS Partition 11 GB

The volumes 3, 4 and 5 all reside on my slaved 80 GB drive.

Partition ### Type Size Offset
------------- --------- ------- -------
Partition 1 Primary 32 GB 32 KB
Partition 2 Extended 43 GB 32 GB
Partition 3 Logical 8 GB 32 GB
Partition 4 Logical 23 GB 40 GB
Partition 5 Logical 1028 MB 63 GB
Partition 6 Logical 11 GB 64 GB

Partitions 1 and 6 seem to coorespond to Volumes 3 and 5 on my system. Those two appear to be okay.
------
Partition 3 appears to be the 8 Gb I tried to reserve for Linux.
------
I believe (but could be mistaken) that Partition 4 is my partition that has gone AWOL.
------
For the remeaining two, I can only assume that they are related to the Linux intstillation.

**podunk** · Nov 25, 2006, 08:04 PM

Re: Kubuntu/XP disk partition Question

I must be getting the hang of this Linux stuff - because I forgot how to understand the windows read out there. :-)

Try this:

Code:

sudo fdisk -l

Please note that l is a lowercase L not a 1!

This will not format your disks - it will give a read out that makes some sense. Post the results and maybe someone will have some ideas.

**Skyguy** · Nov 26, 2006, 12:41 AM

Re: Kubuntu/XP disk partition Question

Originally posted by podunk

I must be getting the hang of this Linux stuff - because I forgot how to understand the windows read out there. :-)

Try this:

Code:

sudo fdisk -l

Please note that l is a lowercase L not a 1!

This will not format your disks - it will give a read out that makes some sense. Post the results and maybe someone will have some ideas.

Thanks for the code!

Here's what printed:

Disk /dev/hda: 15.3 GB, 15382241280 bytes
255 heads, 63 sectors/track, 1878 cylinders
Units = cylinders of 16065 * 512 = 8225280 bytes

Device Boot Start End Blocks Id System
/dev/hdal * 1 1870 15020743+ 7 HPFS/NTFS
Disk /devlhdb: 80.0 GB, 80026361856 bytes
255 heads, 63 sectors/track, 9729 cylinders
Units = cylinders of 16065 * 512 = 8225280 bytes

Device Boot Start End Blocks Id System
/dev/hdbl 1 4157 33388960+ 7 HPFS/NTFS
Partition 1 does not end on cylinder boundary.
/dev/hdb2 4157 9730 44757122 f W95 Ext'd (LBA)
Partition 2 does not end on cylinder boundary.
/dev/hdb5 4158 5203 8401995 7 HPFS/NTFS
/dev/hdb6 8317 9730 11346816+ 7 HPFS/NTFS
/dev/hdb7 * 5204 8185 23952883+ 83 Linux
/dev/hdb8 8186 8316 1052226 82 Linux swap / Solaris
Partition table entries are not in disk order

**podunk** · Nov 26, 2006, 08:30 AM

Re: Kubuntu/XP disk partition Question

Ouch! Dat bad!

Do you have a DVD burner or backup drive of some sort? If so I would strongly urge you to back up your important personal files before going any further

I searched Google for
"Partition 1 does not end on cylinder boundary."
and the universal recommendation of the 10 pages I read was reformat the whole drive.

If it were my hard drive I would use Partimage to make an image of my drive and store it some where.

I would then use the TestDisk repair CD - mainly because I'm a new Linux user and I understand the layout and read out of TestDisk better than I do the tools of the Linux rescue CD.

TestDisk has a very detailed walk through on searching for and restoring partition tables. With a little luck you'll be able to restore your partitions and completely bork your Linux install. You don't have much invested in this Linux install and can always redo it.

If you end up having to reformat and start over. Plan your partitions first - a good page for that is here:
http://psychocats.net/ubuntu/index

Install Windows first then Linux.

**joneall** · Feb 11, 2007, 06:06 AM

Re: Kubuntu/XP disk partition Question

I also looked up the "Partition 1 does not end on cylinder boundary." message and found it means what it says but isn't serious. The recommendation I read is to not allocate partitions by bytes (MB/GB) but by cylinders. That was at

http://boudicca.tux.org/mhonarc/ma-l.../msg00163.html

This is a test system with Windows on hda1 and Kubuntu on hda2 and hda3 (swap), so all I have to lose is about 4 hours of installation time. Since it's a learning experience, I want to install Windows on the whole disk, then resize it before creating the Linux partitions.

I thought I'd use the Live disk to run qtparted and resize the partitions. But qtparted won't let me designate cylinders, only MB or GB! Since a cylinder on my disk is 516096 bytes, MB won't do the job.

Is there a readily available partition resizing tool which speaks in cylinders? I don'think fdisk does resizing and parted doesn't seem to resize ntfs, tho it will "detect" it (dixit man parted), whatever that may mean.

Suggestions? Thanks in advance.

**joneall** · Feb 11, 2007, 12:20 PM

Re: Kubuntu/XP disk partition Question

I tried again by starting over to enter enough decimal points to specify the exact number of bytes per partition in order to have an integral number of cylinders in each. To no avail. Still see "Partition n does not end on cylinder boundary" for each one. In addition, just after logging on, I see

"The process for the file protocol died unexpectedly."

Whatever that may mean...

Help, please. Maybe I should just get a bigger disk or forget this machine.

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Kubuntu/XP disk partition Question

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