[vox-tech] HD Repartition frustration

[Tim Riley]

On Thu, 2006-06-15 at 06:59 -0700, Donald Greg McGahan wrote:
> Sorry,
> I was not clear in my question.
> I'm not concerned with the cylinders being greater than 1024 (unless I
> should be).
> The issue I have is that I cannot delete the existing partitions and,
> therefore, cannot repartition the hard drive.

I didn't see the command "mkfs" in your steps. After manipulating
the partition table using "fdisk", you can format each partition
using "mkfs".

> Donald McGahan
> 
> --- Peter Jay Salzman <p at dirac.org> wrote:
> 
> > On Thu 15 Jun 06,  6:37 AM, Donald Greg McGahan
> > <dgmcgahan at sbcglobal.net> said:
> > > I have a 100Gb Seagate 2.5 inch hard drive that currently has a
> > ntfs
> > > partition, and extended partition with a fat32 partition within it.
> > I
> > > wanted to repartition it to a single fat32 partition. I removed it
> > from
> > > it's (third party) external enclosure and installed it as an
> > secondary
> > > IDE slave (adapter) in my AMD K7 (1.33MHz) Ubuntu OS box.
> > > I cannot seem to accomplish this task?!?
> > > I've tired deleting all of the partitions and then writing but no
> > joy.
> > > I've been fussing with this on and off for a few days and thought I
> > get
> > > some help.
> > > Here is what I'm doing.
> > > I pop open a terminal window and 
> > > 
> > > fdisk /dev/hdd (i've tried both with sudo and sudo su)
> > > 
> > > then
> > > 
> > > Command (m for help): p
> > > 
> > > Disk /dev/hdd: 100.0 GB, 100030242816 bytes
> > > 255 heads, 63 sectors/track, 12161 cylinders
> > > Units = cylinders of 16065 * 512 = 8225280 bytes
> > > 
> > >    Device Boot      Start         End      Blocks   Id  System
> > > /dev/hdd1               1       10027    80541846    7  HPFS/NTFS
> > > /dev/hdd2           10028       12161    17141355    f  W95 Ext'd
> > (LBA)
> > > /dev/hdd5           10028       12161    17141323+   b  W95 FAT32
> > > 
> > > Command (m for help): d
> > > Partition number (1-5): 5
> > > 
> > > Command (m for help): p
> > > 
> > > Disk /dev/hdd: 100.0 GB, 100030242816 bytes
> > > 255 heads, 63 sectors/track, 12161 cylinders
> > > Units = cylinders of 16065 * 512 = 8225280 bytes
> > > 
> > >    Device Boot      Start         End      Blocks   Id  System
> > > /dev/hdd1               1       10027    80541846    7  HPFS/NTFS
> > > /dev/hdd2           10028       12161    17141355    f  W95 Ext'd
> > (LBA)
> > > 
> > > Command (m for help): w
> > > The partition table has been altered!
> > > 
> > > Calling ioctl() to re-read partition table.
> > > Syncing disks.
> > > dig at vill:~$ sudo fdisk /dev/hdd
> > > 
> > > The number of cylinders for this disk is set to 12161.
> > > 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)
> > > 
> > > Command (m for help): p
> > > 
> > > Disk /dev/hdd: 100.0 GB, 100030242816 bytes
> > > 255 heads, 63 sectors/track, 12161 cylinders
> > > Units = cylinders of 16065 * 512 = 8225280 bytes
> > > 
> > >    Device Boot      Start         End      Blocks   Id  System
> > > /dev/hdd1               1       10027    80541846    7  HPFS/NTFS
> > > /dev/hdd2           10028       12161    17141355    f  W95 Ext'd
> > (LBA)
> > > /dev/hdd5           10028       12161    17141323+   b  W95 FAT32
> > 
> > I was under the impression that BIOS automagically does translation
> > to get
> > around this.  It uses some geometry for disk I/O and, transparently,
> > a fake
> > geometry when talking to things like DOS.  There's a "large hard
> > drive"
> > HOWTO (or something like that) which gives gory details.
> > 
> > If your BIOS is newer than, say, mid-nineties, I don't think this is
> > really
> > an issue, and hasn't been for over a decade.
> > 
> > Pete
> > _______________________________________________
> > vox-tech mailing list
> > vox-tech at lists.lugod.org
> > http://lists.lugod.org/mailman/listinfo/vox-tech
> > 
> 
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