[SOLVED but with a great loss] Re: [ltp] Partition table seems corrupted

[jcms]

   I feel really stupid I was not able to make this work.

   I have changed the 'head count' to the number as indicated by the manufacturer of the drive and the number of cylinders was updated correctly "magically".

   I then use testdisk to recover the partition I was interested on, /dev/hdb2, I had then to use reiserfsck before being able to mount the partition. I don't know why but [all] the files/directories went to 'lost+found' many files got broken in pieces. A nightmare. The tough part will be to put some of them together. I am interested in recovering my wife's Doctorate thesis (about 10 files) from a few hundred thousand files with only numbers on their names.

  Thank you all for your help.

  J.C.

  P.S. How do I combine two threads in to one at this stage ?


-----Original Message-----
From: James McKenzie <jjmckenzie51@sprintpcs.com>
Sent: Dec 26, 2004 2:27 PM
To: linux-thinkpad@linux-thinkpad.org
Subject: Re: [ltp] Partition table seems corrupted

jcms wrote:
>    Dear Mr. Keitel,
>   
>    I tried to change the number of cylinders to the correct one with fdisk, i.e., 93015.
>    Here is what I did:
> 
> ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------   
> # fdisk /dev/hdb
> Command (m for help): m
> Command action
>    a   toggle a bootable flag
>    b   edit bsd disklabel
>    c   toggle the dos compatibility flag
>    d   delete a partition
>    l   list known partition types
>    m   print this menu
>    n   add a new partition
>    o   create a new empty DOS partition table
>    p   print the partition table
>    q   quit without saving changes
>    s   create a new empty Sun disklabel
>    t   change a partition's system id
>    u   change display/entry units
>    v   verify the partition table
>    w   write table to disk and exit
>    x   extra functionality (experts only)
> 
> Command (m for help): x
>                                                                                                                                   
> Expert command (m for help): m
> Command action
>    b   move beginning of data in a partition
>    c   change number of cylinders
>    d   print the raw data in the partition table
>    e   list extended partitions
>    f   fix partition order
>    g   create an IRIX (SGI) partition table
>    h   change number of heads
>    m   print this menu
>    p   print the partition table
>    q   quit without saving changes
>    r   return to main menu
>    s   change number of sectors/track
>    v   verify the partition table
>    w   write table to disk and exit
> 
> 
>    Expert command (m for help): c
> Number of cylinders (1-1048576, default 6201): 93015
>                                                                                                                                   
> The number of cylinders for this disk is set to 93015.
> There is nothing wrong with that, but this is larger than 1024,
> and could in certain setups cause problems with:
> 1) software that runs at boot time (e.g., old versions of LILO)
> 2) booting and partitioning software from other OSs
>    (e.g., DOS FDISK, OS/2 FDISK)
>                                                                                                                                   
> Expert command (m for help): r
>                                                                                                                                   
> Command (m for help): w
> The partition table has been altered!
>  
> Calling ioctl() to re-read partition table.
> Syncing disks.
> 
> ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
> 
> After that fdisk still reports 6201 cylinders. Any ideas ?
> 
Yes, extended Logical Block Addressing, which allows up to 64 logical 
heads per drive.  What does your BIOS report for the drive's geometry, 
because that is what fdisk is using.  Also, I have the 'partition does 
not end on a cylinder' error for my Windows98 partition on my A22p. 
Nothing is 'broken' and both Linux and Windows98 boot without a problem.

BTW, you have two threads on this problem, please combine them into one.

James McKenzie

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