Re: How to partition for Win98?

[Andrew Clausen]

On Thu, Oct 24, 2002 at 12:05:54AM +0200, Heinz Kirchmann wrote:
> Sorry, but I couldn't find a solution for my problem how to partition a 
> harddisk properly for use in Windows98 and Linux. I tried hard to solve 
> this problem by myself but I'm running out of ideas now. Maybe you can 
> help me, although this is _very_ probable not a bug of parted (I 
> interpreted the sentence 'All discussion related to Parted is welcome' 
> that my problem is welcome, too :-)

Of course :)

> The history: In earlier days I used to partition my harddisks using 
> cfdisk. Doing it that way seemed to be a good idea until I once tried to 
>  format one of my partitions from Windows98. This caused damage on 
> several partitions, even the ones with ext2, so I lost one of my Linux 
> systems that way. Now someone told me, that I had to be careful when 
> using big disks (> 8.5G): in that case one had to use the extended 
> versions for extended partition and windows partitions, he said.

That's not very nice :/

> I checked that and found indeed the harddisk (of about 40G) wrongly 
> partitioned with partition type 5 for extended and 6 for the windows 
> partitions (fat16). Now I recently had a disk crash and now have the 
> opportunity to repartition the disk and correct this mistake.

You can change partition types.  (Well, "flags")

        (parted) set MINOR lba on

> Since I was a little bit disappointed of cfdisk (where the type of the 
> extended partition seems to be automatically chosen as of type 5), I 
> decided to try parted instead. This worked well in that the extended 
> partition is now of type f and windows partitions (all logical) are of 
> type c (I decided to use fat32 now instead of fat16). BUT: when I boot 
> into my Windows98 system it is showing one more drive than I have 
> windows partitions.

Very strange.  Even stranger: why isn't parted detecting file systems
on those partitions?  (hda7 & friends)

> This does not increase my confidence into invulnerability for my Linux 
> partitions when working with Windows98. First of all I thought the disk 
> might be too big for Windows 98 at all, but when I tried with another 
> smaller disk (9G) I found the same effects take place (indeed I found 
> _two_ more drives than partitions in that case). I tried hard to google 
> for more information, but I couldn't find anything relevant up to now.
> So I decided to write this mail hoping you might give me a hint how to 
> avoid that problem. I'm really desperate, so any advice is welcome (or 
> maybe a hint where I can find more information).

Perhaps windows doesn't like non-windows partitions coming before
it in the extended partition.  (Where "coming before" means
"numbering-wise", not geometry-wise?)

That would explain "the extra 2"

Why do you have so many partitions?!
Cheers,
Andrew

> Disk geometry for /dev/sda: 0.000-8715.820 megabytes
> 1          0.031   1427.651  primary   fat16       boot
> 2       1427.651   1670.822  primary   ext2        
> 3       1670.823   1913.994  primary               
> 4       1913.994   7883.459  extended              
> 5       1914.025   2157.165  logical   linux-swap  
> 6       2157.196   4063.315  logical   fat16       
> 7       4063.346   5020.312  logical               
> 8       5020.343   7883.459  logical   ext2        
> 
> Disk geometry for /dev/hda: 0.000-39266.718 megabytes
> 1          0.031    400.056  primary   ext2        
> 2        400.056    800.112  primary   ext2        
> 3        800.112   4800.673  primary   ext2        
> 4       4800.674  39260.412  extended              lba
> 5       4800.705   7302.985  logical   ext2        
> 6       7303.017   7797.172  logical   ext2        
> 7       7797.204   9797.453  logical               lba
> 8       9797.484  11797.734  logical               lba
> 9      11797.765  13798.015  logical               lba
> 10     13798.046  15798.295  logical               lba
> 11     15798.327  16300.327  logical               
> 12     16300.358  19296.826  logical               
> 
> Disk geometry for /dev/hdc: 0.000-43979.414 megabytes
> 1          0.031    243.171  primary   ext2        boot
> 2        243.171   1388.430  primary               
> 3       1388.430   2149.321  primary   ext2        
> 4       2149.321  41456.799  extended              
> 5       2149.352   5012.468  logical   ext2        
> 6       5012.499   5773.359  logical   ext2        
> 7       5773.390   6016.530  logical   ext2        
> 8       6016.562   6259.702  logical   ext2        
> 9       6259.733   8165.852  logical   fat16       
> 10      8165.883   9122.849  logical   ext2        
> 11      9122.880  11028.999  logical   ext2        
> 12     11029.030  13892.146  logical   ext2        
> 13     13892.177  16276.794  logical   ext2        
> 14     16276.825  17233.791  logical   ext2        
> 15     17233.822  18567.312  logical   ext2        
> 16     18567.343  22379.611  logical   ext2        
> 17     22379.643  31918.205  logical   ext2        
> 18     31918.236  41456.799  logical   ext2