Re: [TCLUG:20572] Partitioning problem

[Brian <marshmallowmateys@email.com>]

>You may have a lingering non-dos partition. Sometimes dos fdisk >isn't able
>to get rid of these. If the version of mandrake you have has >partition
>magic, try that. If not, linux fdisk, cfdisk, disk druid, fips, >etc.
Should
>be able to get rid of the offending partition.

DOS fdisk understands 2 partition types and labels anything else non-DOS. 
linux fdisk recognizes almost 100 types, and can see a lot of things that
DOS fdisk won't.  Since you've deleted and resized partitions, there's a
very good chance that you have one or more partitions that don't start or
end on a cylinder boundary.  linux fdisk will see them, Dos fdisk won't. 
Doing a 'p' in linux fdisk tells you everything about your partitions.  If
nothing is listed, there are no partitions.  It doesn't sound like you care
too much about the windows partition (assuming you either have it backed up
or don't care about whatever's on there) which is always a good thing when
messing with partition tables :-).

Your best bet would be to boot linux fdisk, delete all partitions, reboot
from a floppy, run fdisk /mbr under DOS to make sure LILO or any other boot
sector programs are gone, and repartition using DOS fdisk.  Once you have
one big partition dump Windows back on and you're on your way.  My
experiences with linux fdisk creating FAT partitions has not been good in
the past, so be sure to re-create those with DOS.

If all else fails, you may have to low level format the disk.  Don't try it
unless you are ABSOLUTREY SURE you can't get that space back any other way,
or just live with it.  Low level formatting has given me a high success rate
but those few that didn't make it are now at the bottom of the dumpster. 
Just to warn you :-)

-Brian


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