[clue-tech] How to repair an overlapped partition

[Collins Richey]

On 9/10/06, David L. Anselmi <anselmi at anselmi.us> wrote:


>
> It is odd that fdisk doesn't get the right starting cylinder.  That
> would be worth asking the fdisk maintainers about, I think.
>

I doubt that fdisk is at fault. This disk was mangled by the Ubuntu
(origin Debian?) partitioner components, most likely parted or
ntfsresize or similar, when I shrunk the size of the ntfs partition
months ago. I don't know how fdisk decides where the free space starts
- use the end of existing partitions or the start of a partition that
is deleted or use a free-space-starts-here field.

> It seems likely that the boot sector of hda3 is using a block out of
> your NTFS, assuming that the partitions really overlap.  A free block,
> apparently.

As noted earlier, all blocks are free; the partition has never been
used, nor will it be untill I patch the problem.

>
> It would be worth looking at the disk with cfdisk to see what it says.
> cfdisk usually tries harder to get good results than fdisk and ought to
> suggest something useful.  I think it will also handle swapping hda1 and
> hda2 automatically, to answer David's question.
>

Cfdisk doesn't appear to show anything except the partition sizes (?).
As noted earlier, I have no need to switch the hda1/2 partitions. The
Gateway dweebs set it up that way for some recovery related reason. It
ain't bothering me, so I ain't mucking with it.

-- 
Collins Richey
     If you fill your heart with regrets of yesterday and the worries
     of tomorrow, you have no today to be thankful for.