I have a hard disk with a non standard partition order which is likely to have to have a windows restore done on it. I actually have it the way I want it atm. I am interested in finding out if there is a handy way to back up the partition table, like I can backup the mbr. Where does the partition table hide? 160 Gig Sata hd, btw.
View 7 RepliesIs there a difference between using GPT partition table when formating hard drives and MS-DOS partition table? What are the advantages/disadvantages of using either?
View 2 Replies View RelatedI create Backup partition with dd and save my backup on NTFS partition. i want recover this backup,what should i do? can i use boot cd and use dd command for recover it?
View 2 Replies View RelatedI was installing opensuse 11.2 in parallel with windows xp.but during installation suddenly power has gone and after that opensuse is giving me the error message corrupt partition.i am also not able to login in xp. so I decide to reinstall windows, I got the error saying "invalid partition table" after the first restart of windows xp installation.
I tried to use windows system recovery console and committing fixmbr and fixboot commands, but didn't work.
i have 2 window partition(1 for windows and 1 for data).i do,nt want to format 2,nd partition.
How can I installed windows?My plan was first to install windows xp, then opensuse again.
I have tried to automate the configuration of a usb drive with not much success.
The problem that I have is that I have a large amount of usb drives that have a partition table of type "loop" and I need to change them to "msdos". The size of the drives vary and I need to use FAT32 or FAT16 file system.
I've tried various partitioning commands and gui applications but cant find one that I can give a one line command to to set the partition table, maximum partition size and file system.
I was reading another thread about someone with a bad partition table and I decided to join this forum. I'm not going to take any drastic actions with the partition (/dev/sda3) in question. I am going to wait for instructions on what to do first. I am not very good with Linux and need some hand holding. System: DELL 4550 Dual-Booted with XP and Ubuntu. Works OK, just no swap. Well, here's what I did: I deleted a partition for Windows XP Pro because it was a trial, and it ran out. I then decided to slide the swap partition for the Ubuntu Linux that I dual-boot into over. (If this was successful, I was going to try expanding the root partition to take up the unused space.) I used Gparted on a CD to do this, as I figured it was safe to do.
I now cannot mount the swap space at bootup (and have to go into a backup version of the OS), although I can use Gparted in Linux to execute the "swapon" command, and it appears that it worked because I now see "swapoff" as an option on the context menu. (I actually don't even need a swap partition, except to hibernate.) If I highlight the swap partition and click on "Drive" on Gparted's menu bar and select "Create Partition Table", it will erase all data on /dev/sda, so how do I fix the bad partition table non-destructively?
Everything is installed and setup on my system, but when I setup my partitions I chose my Windows partition to be bootable. Can I just use cfdisk to toggle the bootable flag so my linux partition is bootable and rewrite the partition table?
View 2 Replies View RelatedI want to change my sda2 partition to ntfs type. i have installed GParted but it is returning a strange type of error. Here is the error dump file...
[Code]...
WARNING: the kernel failed to re-read the partition table on /dev/sda (Device or resource busy). As a result, it may not reflect all of your changes until after reboot. WARNING: the kernel failed to re-read the partition table on /dev/sda (Device or resource busy). As a result, it may not reflect all of your changes until after reboot.
Is there a program that will reread the partition table and update the kernel even if one of the unmodified partitions is mounted? I installed my system on one partition, then I added another with free space. Now I want to format the second partition, but the kernel doesn't know about it yet. I tried sfdisk -R /dev/sda, but it refuses while the root partition is mounted. Is there anyway I can avoid rebooting?
View 2 Replies View RelatedUSB flash disk partition disappeared as well as partition table I'm not sure about the cause
Code:
root@u# less /var/log/syslog
usb 5-1: New USB device found, idVendor=058f, idProduct=1234
usb 5-1: New USB device strings: Mfr=1, Product=2, SerialNumber=0
[code]....
Where did the partition table go? The device had one ext3 partition something around 4GB(size of USB storage device). I need to restore few files from this device.
I'm trying to clone a Linux install to a different laptop. It's made a little complicated by two facts:
1) The 'new' laptop I'm trying to copy my Linux installation to is actually older and has a smaller hard drive then the computer I'm copying from
2) The computer I'm copying from has both a windows and Linux installation; I only care about the Linux partition.
I figured I would copy only the Linux partition from my primary computer to the laptop, sense the laptop doesn't have a large enough hard drive to copy everything. So I used the DD commands to copy SDA3 (main Linux partition) from my main computer to SDA2 of my laptop. When I came back a few hours later I was surprise to find my laptop trying to reboot itself (I never turned it off). It would keep starting to reboot, failing, and restarting itself. Not too surprising sense its boot partition wasn't changed so it's trying to boot into centos when I copied a redhat partition to it.
The problem is that when I used a redhat boot disk the rescue mode was unable to find a Linux partition to mount. /dev/sda2 exists, but trying to mount it gets the complaint "No such file or directory". "fdisk -l" lists sda1 (the boot sector) and sda2. Sda2 is the correct size and reports Linux LVM for its system. But "fdisk -l /dev/sda2" gives the error message "Disk /dev/sda2 doesn't contain a valid partition table" Did I not clone the drive correctly, or was an error caused due to the boot sector not being copied yet (the laptops boot sector is smaller then my old computers, so I can't copy from old computer to laptop)? Can I salvage the laptops partition table somehow, or do I have to repeat the cloning process? And if I do have to re-clone my computer can anyone tell me what I did wrong the first time so it works this time? I don't care if I copy just the Linux partition or both windows and Linux. Even though my main computer has a larger hard drive I'm only using about half of its available space so it should be possible to copy both partitions if I could ignore the unused sections of the harddrive.
Edit: I used DD to copy a tiny part of the Linux partition from my laptop so I could look at it. Most of it is illegible binary of course, but I scrolled through till I found some text right near the beginning:
Code:
VolGroup00 {
id="F2MWxh-....-BidcLe"
seqno = 1
[code]....
So it seems that the DD command did copy everything over to the laptop, which is good to know. I noticed that it says device="/dev/sda3" right in the middle of the code I just posted. The Linux section of my original computer was SDA3 but I copied it to partition SDA2 of my laptop. So is the problem because the boot partition is for the wrong device? I don't suppose if I modified that one line to say SDA2 it would be able to load correctly? (Not that I know how I would modify the line, short of using the DD command again).
I'm just setting up a partition on a seperate HDD in my system. I plan to use the partition to backup the important files on my main HDD (to guard against HD crash).
The question I have is about where would be the typical location to auto mount this partition? Which would it be normal to go for:
1. /backup/
2. /media/backup/
3. /mnt/backup/
4. /home/chris/backup/
What I believe has happened is that I've corrupted the partition table. Essentially one of my partitions' ending point exceeds the maximum number of cylinders/sectors on my drive.
Essentially I have the same problem as on the thread @ [url] but do not know how to fix this and am afraid to reformat/partition based on sectors without really knowing what I'm doing here.
[code]...
When I try to look at SDA in GParted everything shows up as unallocated (though it's obviously not) and it says
[code]...
In my efforts to resize my BTRFS Partition, I accidentally unmarked my BTRFS partition as being BTRFS, and can't mark it back as I can't find the numeric ID for BTRFS and how to apply.
View 1 Replies View RelatedI installed Ubuntu as shown in the wiki and when I went to restart it gave me a lovely blinking cursor and nothing else. So I held down option, loaded into osx, reinstalled rEFIt and got my menu on startup. Unfortunately, the partition sync tool doesn't seam to be working, it gives me an error: Status: MBR partition table is invalid, partitions overlap. Error: Not Found returned from gptsync.efi
View 9 Replies View RelatedI originally had an Ubuntu partition on my hard drive which occupied about half of it. I installed Windows 7 in the remaining unallocated space and I was planning on doing a grub update from a live cd afterwards. BUT when I looked at my partition table, the space where the ubuntu partition used to be is now unallocated space!
View 5 Replies View RelatedI need to copy partition table for sda, I have 3 primary partitions and 1 extended partition on sda. I understand that fdisk cant copy extended partition table and I need to use sfdisk.
Correct me if I am wrong -
1. For primary partitions
Code:
dd if=sda-mbr.bin of=/dev/sdX bs=1 count=64 skip=446 seek=446
2. For extended partition
Code:
sfdisk -d /dev/sda2 > backup-sdX.sf
Where it will store the files after backing them up. I tried SUSE 11.2 DVD, it has back up partition table utility under repairs-advanced options but it suggests saving partition table to floppy. Why it doesnt offer to save it on a removable medium or to CD.
I got swap space full error and the ubuntu version of "blue screen of death". I used Disk Utilities to delete a 2.1GB unused partition. When I tried to create a swap space partition (with Disk Utilities) it failed. In the mean time ubuntu did some security updates. When I tried to create again Disk Uilities did not complain but only created a small ~ 500 kB partition. I deleted that and reboot and got "unknown filesystem grub rescue>". I booted from a USB key successfully. Now Disk Utilities and File Browser can see all the partitions and files on the hard drive, but GParted thinks the entire hard drive is unallocated. I vaguely remember that there are two partition table on the hard drive. It may be that one of them was deleted (when I removed the ~ 500 kB partition with Disk Utilities earlier maybe?). It seems at least the other partition table is still intact since Disk Utilities and File Browser can still see all the partitions and files. Is it possible to restore the deleted or damaged partition table and make the hard drive bootable again?
View 9 Replies View RelatedI Inadvertently deleted a good partition while trying to clean up after a 10.10 update install failure that left grub broken and prevented me from using my working Linux partition. (installed 10.4 in a new partition) Used testdisk to restore the deleted partition which resulted in the entire partition table being wiped out.All partions are gone, win Xp, 2 Linux partitions, 2 Linux swap partitions.Testdisk deep search does see the partitions but will not recreate the table.
Is their anything I am doing wrong in Testdisk that it won't write the table?Nothing else has been written to the disk.I very carefully recorded the partition information - is their any way to manually enter?
A couple of years ago, I got a 2TB drive and installed Debian on it.
I used the standard installation procedure, as I recall, and created three partitions, which are shown below in the output of "fdisk":
I have a problem with one hard disk,now it says its Unallocated,and i tried to create a new partition on it,but it says that first i need to create a partition table,but when i create one,choosing msdos label,it doesnt to nothing. I used Gparted in Fedora,how can i create a partition table,so i can use my hard disk again?
View 9 Replies View RelatedI know now: I overwrited the mbr with a totally wrong one, and I have no backup.So far as I can recall, I had two primary partitions; the first one for xp, and there were several logical volumes for linux in the second primary partition).None of these partitions are found now, grub reports "Error 22" with the wrong mbr.Can the mbr be corrected/recovered somehow, in a way that all of the original partitions show up again?
I think, the partitions themselves are not damaged, since only the mbr was overwritten.
I suppose a fixmbr command from the recovery console of the xp installation CD would fix the mbr and make the xp system in the first primary partition bootable. Am I right? How about the second primary partition; would fixmbr find that too? (Sorry for the silly questions, but I do not want to commit more mistakes, especially irreversible ones.)
Just now I accidentally used gparted and wiped the partition table on my main hard drive, and now fdisk -l shows nothing! How can i recover my partitions and avoid having to reinstall Gentoo all over again?
View 8 Replies View RelatedI am currently running Linux Mint 8 on a Thinkpad T60p and I decided to free up 20 GB, formatted to EXT4 for Slackware.ed G-Parted)I was able to install Slackware with VirtualBox with my Linux Mint host and I was able to follow through with a full installation without any problems.However when I tried to install it on a real partition I got the below notification: "You will not be able to write the partition table.
Note: Sector size is 2048 (not 512)Device contains neither a valid DOS partition table, nor Sun, SGI or OSF disklabel.Building a new disklabel with disk identifier 0xf4252222.Changes will remain in memory only, until you decide to write them.After that, of course, the previous content won't be recoverable.Warning: Invalid flag 0x0000 of partition table will be corrected by (w)rite"
I need to use a GPT partition table and tried installing Slackware(64) 13.1. But it reported that there were no partitions when the disk did have about 10 partitions in the GPT partition table. The MBR partition table was set up with the protective entry that is normal with GPT.
I did a test install using just 2 partitions, initially pointed to via an MBR partition table, and later changed over to a GPT partition table pointing to the same sectors, with the protective MBR, and Slackware boots up and runs just fine.
The lilo command also works just fine. I tried it because I was not sure if it looked at the partition entries, and it would be a critical piece to keep the system running. when Slackware will have GPT support? GPT is required for partitions larger than 2TB or starting after the 2TB line. There are now 3TB drives out, and RAID arrays much larger than 2TB have been possible for years.
On my old centos 5.2 installation, yesterday my system stopped. The only daemon working was the ping. Every other were not working ( http, svnserver, vncserver, ssh ... ) but yesterday morning everything worked fine! Since the system is headless, I rebooted the computer this morning. Then it never came back. I placed a screen on the computer and when the computer boots, I can see : loading grub stage 2 then I have a black screen with grub>
There is something wrong ... I'm sad because I moved in my new house and did not took the time to restart my backups ( in fact, I did not found the AC adapter for the external drive ) ... I downloaded the brand new centos 5.5 installation DVD and when I try to upgrade my system the installer tells me that the partition on 1 hd is not readable. Then I ignore the message but before getting to the partition manager, it tells me that the partition table for the lvm 00 ( /home ) can not be found and I have to reboot. Since this hard disk is the biggest ( 1tb ) and all of my data is on this one, I'd like to know what I can do to recover this data ?
I had 40 gb of unused space at the beginning of my drive, then a 15gb primary ext3 partition for /, then a 100GB ext4 primary partition for /home, then a 4 gb extended partition that contains two 2 gb swap partitions.
I installed FreeBSD on the empty space at the beginning of the drive. The slice I created did not start on the first block. There were a few MB of free space before and after it.
After the installation finished (with no errors), grub would hang on the "Grub loading/Welcome to Grub screen". I booted a squeeze CD in rescue mode and reinstalled grub to /dev/sda. After rebooting, Grub still hangs at the same place.
I booted a live CD and checked the output of fdisk. For each of my partitions, it says "Partition does not end on cylinder boundary". I am hoping that whatever happened to my disk is not recoverable. Fortunately, I backed up some essential files beforehand, but I still don't really want to lose my old squeeze system.
Right now I am fscking all partitions.
had a bad experience when Fedora 15 overwrote the ext4 partition of a data disk to MVL during the installation process.I cloned the HD and now I am working on it. However, my first attempt resulted in 900.00 number-renamed files into the lost+found folder. And that's not what I want: with this number of files I need to recover the directory structure and the files real names.I know this is a hard issue for being discussed in the forum and that I shall look for some expert help, but, I wished to useis bad moment as an opportunity of learning.
View 1 Replies View RelatedI have encountered something of a mystery here. The other day while in /dev I ran 'ls sda*' and noticed this...Quote:
ls -lZ /dev/sda*
brw-rw----. root disk system_u:object_r:fixed_disk_device_t:s0 /dev/sda
brw-rw----. root disk system_u:object_r:fixed_disk_device_t:s0 /dev/sda1
[code]...
I ve got a dual boot, XP and FC 12 on a single harddrive. After defragmentation of NTFS partition (With XP installation) cant'boot linux So, rub statrts with boot menu after selecting linux it tries to load linux but prints out some messages again and again (I do not remember contetn of messages) And these messages are circulating
View 14 Replies View Related