is fdisk supposed to be better than GParted?
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From: pk on 18 Feb 2010 05:01 yawnmoth wrote: > According to GParted, however, it only has one partition - an > unallocated one with an unallocated filesystem. My question is... > why the difference? You might find this note enlightening, taken from the fdisk man page: "fdisk is a buggy program that does fuzzy things - usually it happens to produce reasonable results. Its single advantage is that it has some support for BSD disk labels and other non-DOS partition tables. Avoid it if you can."
From: yawnmoth on 18 Feb 2010 11:12 On Feb 17, 9:40 pm, Stefan Patric <n...(a)this.address.com> wrote: > On Wed, 17 Feb 2010 17:23:19 -0800, yawnmoth wrote: > > According to "sudo fdisk -1", /dev/sdc is described thusly: > > > Disk /dev/sdc: 120.0 GB, 120034123776 bytes 255 heads, 63 sectors/track, > > 14593 cylinders Units = cylinders of 16065 * 512 = 8225280 bytes Disk > > identifier: 0xf0000000 > > > Device Boot Start End Blocks Id System > > /dev/sdc1 * 14267 14594 2620416 c W95 FAT32 (LBA) > > /dev/sdc2 11 1316 10485760 7 HPFS/NTFS > > /dev/sdc3 * 1316 14267 104031232 7 HPFS/NTFS > > /dev/sdc4 14267 14594 2621440 f W95 Ext'd (LBA) > > /dev/sdc5 14267 14594 2620416 0 Empty > > > Partition table entries are not in disk order > > And the partitioning is all fucked up as well. Where to begin... > > 1. Three partitions overlap: sdc2 ends at 1316. sdc3 begins at 1316 > and ends at 14267. sdc4 begins at 14267. They shouldn't. Partitions > shouldn't overlap. > > 2. Three of the partitions, sdc1, sdc4 & sdc5, occupy the same space > on the drive. sdc4 is an Extended partition. That's okay, but sdc1 & 5 > are both the same partition just with different names and IDs. > > 3. sdc1 is shown as a Primary partition, by its name, but it's really > a Logical one based on its Start and End, residing on sdc4. In Linux, > drives numbers 1, 2, 3, and 4 are used only for Primary partitions. 5 > and above are Logical and all reside on the Extended partition. An > Extended partition can only be a Primary. And there should only be one > Extended partition per physical hard drive. > > 3. sdc1 & sdc3 are both set as boot partitions. On any physical hard > drive, regardless of how many partitions it has, there should only be one > partition designated with the "boot" flag. > > > According to GParted, however, it only has one partition - an > > unallocated one with an unallocated filesystem. My question is... why > > the difference? > > I'm not surprised. Why? Maybe... GParted is a smart partitioning/ > editing utility compared to fdisk. Probably got confused by all the > partition errors when it tried to read the disk. > > > Also, GParted took a very long time to come up, whereas "sudo fdisk - l" > > took no time at all. Any ideas as to why? > > I'm surprise it read it all. fdisk -l just reads and displays the > Partition Table without reading the drive itself. > > Here take a look at the partitioning on my Linux box: > > [stef(a)localhost ~]$ fdisk -l /dev/sda > > Disk /dev/sda: 160.0 GB, 160041885696 bytes > 255 heads, 63 sectors/track, 19457 cylinders > Units = cylinders of 16065 * 512 = 8225280 bytes > Disk identifier: 0x000f2123 > > Device Boot Start End Blocks Id System > /dev/sda1 * 1 1220 9799618+ 83 Linux > /dev/sda2 1221 6100 39198600 83 Linux > /dev/sda3 6101 6163 506047+ 82 Linux swap > /dev/sda4 6164 19457 106784055 85 Linux extended > /dev/sda5 6164 8075 15358108+ 83 Linux > /dev/sda6 8076 19457 91425883+ 83 Linux > > This is the way partitioning should look. See no overlaps. All > partitions in order with no gaps. Only one partition with the boot > flag. Although Linux doesn't use it. It's there for the BIOS. The > system by default actually boots off the distro on sda5. Hmmm... how could that have happened? I just reformatted the drive in Windows Vista (not a quick format - the other kind) and it didn't report any errors back to me, so it doesn't seem as though the drive's going bad...
From: Keith Keller on 18 Feb 2010 13:34 On 2010-02-18, pk <pk(a)pk.invalid> wrote: > yawnmoth wrote: > >> According to GParted, however, it only has one partition - an >> unallocated one with an unallocated filesystem. My question is... >> why the difference? > > You might find this note enlightening, taken from the fdisk man page: > > "fdisk is a buggy program that does fuzzy things - usually it happens to > produce reasonable results. Its single advantage is that it has some support > for BSD disk labels and other non-DOS partition tables. Avoid it if you > can." I was going to quote that from my man page, but then noted that it does not appear in man fdisk on my CentOS systems, only on my Slackware system. It's possible the OP has the CentOS version of the fdisk man page. (It's certainly possible the OP did not read the man page.) --keith -- kkeller-usenet(a)wombat.san-francisco.ca.us (try just my userid to email me) AOLSFAQ=http://www.therockgarden.ca/aolsfaq.txt see X- headers for PGP signature information
From: Stefan Patric on 18 Feb 2010 13:43 On Thu, 18 Feb 2010 08:12:35 -0800, yawnmoth wrote: > [big snip] > > Hmmm... how could that have happened? I just reformatted the drive > in Windows Vista (not a quick format - the other kind) and it didn't > report any errors back to me, so it doesn't seem as though the drive's > going bad... Partitioning "errors" doesn't mean the hard drive is bad, and won't show when you check the drive. Another thing occurred to me: If your Windows partitions are ending on block or track or sector boundaries instead of cylinder boundaries, there could appear to be an overlap when there isn't, since fdisk -l by default reports start and end cylinders. Try fdisk -lu and see if there is overlap. The "u" gives start and end in sectors. Also, if you formatted the entire hard disk, there shouldn't be any partitions left. They would be destroyed by the formatting. However, if in Vista/Windows, you formatted, say, the D: drive, then the partition would remain, but all data on that partition would be destroyed. Which did you do? Windows has such a screwy way of designating physical drives and partitions: There is no differentiation between the two. Very confusing. So, be very clear with you descriptions of what you do. Stef
From: yawnmoth on 18 Feb 2010 14:51
On Feb 18, 12:43 pm, Stefan Patric <n...(a)this.address.com> wrote: > On Thu, 18 Feb 2010 08:12:35 -0800, yawnmoth wrote: > > [big snip] > > > Hmmm... how could that have happened? I just reformatted the drive > > in Windows Vista (not a quick format - the other kind) and it didn't > > report any errors back to me, so it doesn't seem as though the drive's > > going bad... > > Partitioning "errors" doesn't mean the hard drive is bad, and won't show > when you check the drive. > > Another thing occurred to me: If your Windows partitions are ending on > block or track or sector boundaries instead of cylinder boundaries, there > could appear to be an overlap when there isn't, since fdisk -l by default > reports start and end cylinders. Try fdisk -lu and see if there is > overlap. The "u" gives start and end in sectors. > > Also, if you formatted the entire hard disk, there shouldn't be any > partitions left. They would be destroyed by the formatting. However, if > in Vista/Windows, you formatted, say, the D: drive, then the partition > would remain, but all data on that partition would be destroyed. Which > did you do? Windows has such a screwy way of designating physical drives > and partitions: There is no differentiation between the two. Very > confusing. So, be very clear with you descriptions of what you do. I tried to delete all the partitions with GParted but after GParted spent a while reloading, I wasn't sure if anything had actually happened. I went into Windows, saw that they had now been deleted and went ahead and formatted it while there. |