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Reliable partitionoing tool


mitsubishi

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Following on from me forgetting to hide 98 (Ref) I thought I had XP where I wanted it, but its gone wrong again.

This is what I had prior to installing:

a) 1 G    - FAT32 - Hidden - Win98

b) 4.5 G  - FAT32 - Hidden - Win98

c) 18.5 G - NTFS - Active

d) 52.5 G - Extended

e) 12.5 G - FAT32(LBA)

-) 40 G    - Unused space

I had created the NTFS partition with Boot-us. The XP install said it was unrecognized, but formatted it without deleting it first and it called it C:

Now e) is broken, in XP and 98, I couldn't even get the data back (luckilly I recovered half off b) from where it was moved)

So I format e) again, now I can't boot XP, it worked after reinstalling boot-us in MBR from 98. Boot-us says NTFS format is invalid.

What tools can I use to partition and format that like each other?

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Are you wanting to set up a dual-boot system? Or just get rid of Win98 and install XP?

As I said in the other thread, you're better off starting from scratch. You said that everything was backed up, so that shouldn't be a problem. Delete all the partitions and then create only one FAT32 partition for your Win98 install. Install Win98.

Then, put in the WinXP install CD and use it to create a partition for WindowsXP. Install XP.

Once XP is installed, use the Computer Management tools to create the rest of your partitions from the remaining free space.

You can use a Knoppix Live CD or BartPE disc to remove all the partitions. In Knoppix, use qtparted. Dunno about BartPE... haven't touched that in a while.

Also, it's not good to set partition drive letters to A: and B:. Those are still reserved for floppy drives (A: - 3.5", B: - 5.25") for whatever reason. Use C: and beyond for all your partitions.

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I'm setting a quad-boot (linux I'll install later, linux is easier to install and behaves) which will have grub in MBR, I use boot-us or gag until then as grub is easier to set-up from linux. The first 98 gets changed and wont always be 98, its a test ground for OSs that need primary within 8G. XP is where I want it.

I'm not assigning any drive letters to anything, it says 'a)' not 'a:', I thought it was less confusing than 'HDA0', apparently not ;) so I can reference the drives.

The XP disc tools said d) (HDA3) (was actually d:) was 'healthy' even though it wasn't. But I'll try qparted then, I think I might have used that last time when I noticed no problems. This my problem, too many tools, different one everytime, cant remember which work well and with each other.

Also, why don't my two 98's show in XP when hidden, I thought XP ignored that? If they are not hidden, will XP be OK with that once properly independantly installed, it will move them beyond 'c:' and be fine? It was OK with non-independant

a) H:
b) C:(system)
c) E:(boot)

So I guess it is OK with drives prior.

Edited by mitsubishi
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Ok... now it makes a little more sense... although quad-boot... that's kind wierd. I'd just stick with the three (Win98, XP, Linux) and use GRUB as your boot manager (installed to MBR). I don't know all that many OSes today that need to be within the 1024 cylinder block.

AFAIK, hidden partitions are hidden to all programs that don't have special access to the drive itself (Partiton Magic, other partition managers). I don't know if the XP disk management has access to hidden partitions... I don't think it does (since it doesn't even have the option to hide them), but I could be wrong.

You might want to see if GRUB has the ability to hide partitions based on the boot selection, or if it's simply a boot-loader. I haven't done much research into this, but if GRUB can take care of it for you, then it'll save you some time and headaches (and it'll cut down on the number of programs you need).

Oh.... and HDA0 is easier to understand... :P

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Lol, 4's not wierd, when I get a bigger disk I'm having even more, 2 Linux, FreeBSD, XP, 98, 2000 and Hurd :thumbup

Found my kanotix, but qtparted exited with a seg fault when reading the disk as it said it didn't do NTFS. :(

Well I used SFDisk this time, but XP still destroyed HDA3 :angry:

So I tried XPs tools to create a partition there (its created an extended the same size as the logical, but thats fixable) and all seems to be OK.

Still not sure why I'm having these probs, does NTFS size need to go up in 8s or something, when the installer made its own partition it left 7MB after it...

Think I'm going to test all my tools out on another box. I've over a TB of unsorted progs and data that need properly organizing so I'm not using the first thing that I dig out.

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I think I'm in a little over my head here...

I've always noticed that the NTFS partitions always end up with 7MB after them... I have no idea why this is though.

I'm afraid that you've probably got as much use out of me as you're ever going to. If you do figure out how to make things work, be sure to share your findings. :)

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