Corrupt Partition Table? Uh oh...

[Bana]

Hmm, for some reason now when I try installing any more fedora cores onto my HD I get the errorThe partition table on device hde is corrupted. To create new partitions it must be initialized, causing the loss of all data on this driveYet all of my partitions still boot fine? And under System Tools->Hardware browser it just shows a large green bar for the HD (instead of showing the partitions). Fdisk only gives the following output under a p command: Disk /dev/hdc: 100.0 GB, 100030242816 bytes
16 heads, 63 sectors/track, 193821 cylinders
Units = cylinders of 1008 * 512 = 516096 bytes

Device Boot Start End Blocks Id System
/dev/hdc1 1 20321 10241406 83 Linux
Partition 1 does not end on cylinder boundary.
/dev/hdc2 * 20321 101586 40957717+ 83 Linux
Partition 2 does not end on cylinder boundary.
/dev/hdc3 101586 121906 10241437+ c Win95 FAT32 (LBA)
/dev/hdc4 121907 193821 36245160 f Win95 Ext'd (LBA)
/dev/hdc5 121907 142223 10239736+ 83 Linux
/dev/hdc6 1336857 3955145 1319617023+ 82 Linux swap
/dev/hdc7 * 144459 163835 9765976+ 83 Linux

Partition table entries are not in disk order
Is there any way to rewrite my partition table correctly without formatting? Has anyone used gpart (http://public.www.planetmirror.com/pub/gpart/)?

[ghenry]

I am worried as to why you have 2 bootable partitions?

[Bana]

:D I don't have a /boot partition (I read it was recommended not to for fedora somewhere) so I have hdc1 as FC1 x86_64 stable hdc5 as FC1 i386 stable and hdc7 as FC1 rahwhide. I don't know why my home directory hdc2 is bootable though...

Update: I am now getting more errors: during bootup and shutdown these things go through my /var/log/messages file: Mar 21 18:22:02 tuxpenguin kernel: hdc: read_intr: error=0x10 { SectorIdNotFound }, LBAsect=228688855, sector=3986785239
Mar 21 18:22:02 tuxpenguin kernel: hdc: read_intr: status=0x51 { DriveReady SeekComplete Error }
Mar 21 18:22:02 tuxpenguin kernel: hdc: read_intr: error=0x10 { SectorIdNotFound }, LBAsect=228688855, sector=3986785239
etc... I am slightly worried.... :(

[Counterspy]

I want to see the output of any of cfdisk. fdisk, parted etc in the order on the disk, not like the above if you can get it. Until this problem is resolved than try not to write anything to the disk. Also what do you mean by installing more Fedora cores? Same version? Different version? The first problem I see is the two Windows versions not on hda and another previous poster has identified two boot sectors. Up to NT, Windows ME and before insists on being the first partition on the first disk. Some people try to get around this with Boot Magic, now part of Symantec"s Partition Magic, a very bad idea if Linux is to coexist. What are you looking at that gives a big green bar? What is on hda and hdb? What do you mean by your partitions still work and that he system still works like this? To save the partiton table, the MBR must be intact and this is a very difficult problem unless we can suggest how to get around it be selectively deleting partitions if we can see where things went wrong. To give you an idea, the problem starts in the first partition. The high number on it shoud be the the starting low number on the next except with extended partitions whicth go to the last sector on the disk. Within the extended partition the numbers should read xxx to yyy and yyy+1to zzz and so on.

Please list the details of your hard drives, make, model, content and really desirable a disk map similar to the above in the right order.

Counterspy

[Bana]

Okay: fdisk output is above, cfdisk (I can't find that command), and parted gives me this: [root@tuxpenguin root]# parted /dev/hdc
GNU Parted 1.6.3
Copyright (C) 1998, 1999, 2000, 2001, 2002 Free Software Foundation, Inc.
This program is free software, covered by the GNU General Public License.

This program is distributed in the hope that it will be useful, but WITHOUT ANY
WARRANTY; without even the implied warranty of MERCHANTABILITY or FITNESS FOR A
PARTICULAR PURPOSE. See the GNU General Public License for more details.

Using /dev/hdc
(parted) help
<snip>
(parted) print
Warning: Unable to align partition properly. This probably means that another
partitioning tool generated an incorrect partition table, because it didn't have
the correct BIOS geometry. It is safe to ignore,but ignoring may cause
(fixable) problems with some boot loaders.
Ignore/Cancel? I
Error: Can't have a partition outside the disk!
(parted) check
Error: Can't have a partition outside the disk!
(parted)
The green bar should be attached as an image. The harddrive is a Western digital 100GB 1000BB on my secondary IDE channel (master). My hda device is my CDROM that is master. The other fedora installations are two x86_64 installs (one updated to rawhide) and one i386. I guess the problem started when I tried reading the ext3 partitions from a windows installation (on a SATA disk) using a special driver (can't remember the specific name).

The partitions still work as I am typing from it right now :) There seems to be no problems except for what parted, fdisk, hardware browser, and fedora install tell me.

The fdisk map given above is truly in the right order (I don't know why it says it isn't but that is how I made it). Hopefully all of this info helped. Thanks.

[Counterspy]

In a posting at http://www.mandrakeusers.org Artee mentioned that recovering partition tables was not a problem and that there were numerous copies that could be recovered. If he does not post here regularly anymore, then get his attention (PM) over there to come and look at your problem here. While waiting, backup anything you want to save. I'll look in again tomorrow to see if he has been able to help you before any radical surgery. I could not see the attachment but i have copied your posted table. My initial reaction is that the drive must be reformatted and the sofware reinstalled with only one copy of Windows. BTW, what make and model is the sata disk? Is there a reason why the WD drive and the Burner are reversed by most practices? Your guess as to the cause may very well be right and you may want to leave it that way until FC2 is released. Please give a complete description of your system including any other drives. What do want to include on a reformatted disk? Consider visiting the WD site and getting copies of their Lifeguard and Diagnostic Utilties here: http://support.wdc.com/download/#dlgtools .

Counterspy

Counterspy