[techtalk] second hard disk

[Mary Gardiner]

On Wed, Aug 30, 2000 at 06:23:27PM +0200, Helena Verrill wrote:
> I first formatted and partitioned it under windows,
> and then reformatted it under linux, without repartitioning.
> This was OK.  But, later I resized the partitions including
> the one I'd left as fat, and now windows can't read any of
> it, and the windows utility for dealing with disk partioning&
> formatting will only offer to reformat the whole thing, and
> remove all the data, and now I've collected more data I've
> just been dumping on the new disk (while using linux), and
> I don't really want to have to move it all and move it back
> after reformatting etc with windows and linux again...
> is there any way round this?

One way around this is using the linux utility mkdosfs on the fat
partition, which normally doesn't make a dos filesystem properly but may
force windows to recognise the disk and be able to format it. This does
mean losing everything on the FAT parition due to the format.

Another workaround that may not involve this depends on how you've
partitioned the disk. *If* the fat partition is a primary partition, make
sure fdisk or other disk partitioning utility (under Linux) has its type
recorded as b for WIN FAT32 or 6 for FAT16 (print the partition table to
find this out). Make sure the linux partitions are marked as linux (83, or
82 for swap), and if any of the extended partitions are all-Linux, mark
them as type 85 (Linux extended).

You could try this with a logical partition too, but I've found that if
Windows is sharing an extended partition with other drives, it tends to
try to appropriate the rest of the drive in the way you've seen. (The type
Linux knows as 'extended' Win knows as 'DOS extended' and thinks of as
its.

These will probably force Windows to recognise its share, and only its
share of the drive. Windows still may not recognise the contents of the
drive that Linux sees. You may still be forced to move the contents off
the partition with Linux, format the drive with Windows, and move the
contents back on with Linux. If anyone has worked this out minus the
evilness, I'd be interested to hear. In my experience Windows shares hard
drives very poorly with other OSs.

> Anyone got any advice?
> I'm sorry this email is somewhat vague.  Just advice like what 
> size partitions on which disks for what use would be useful.

I don't really have much advice here - I've only done a few installs. Just
ake sure that you have a boot partition under the 1024 cylinder of the
drive (ie make sure the Win partition doesn't have all of it) because
otherwise you'll have to try and install the latest LILO to be able to
boot.

Mary.