Installing FC2 along with WinXP

[DXT]

I guess there were already threads on this subject by my problem is specific to myself.

Couple of days ago I installed FC2 on one of my partitions, only to discover later the famous windows xp non-booting issue. I then followed the instructions in this article, but it still did not work, also parted showed me a warning that it cannot align the partitions propery, maybe due to some other partitoning tool that did stuff it's own way.

This is how my partition table looked in the past:
total drive size: 78GB
hda1: 10GB FAT32 (C: my winxp partition)
hda2: extended partition for rest of disk
hda5: 58GB FAT32 (D: my data partition)
hda6: 6GB ext3 (/)
hda7: 3GB ext3 (/home)
hda8: 1GB linux-swap

after trying to mess around with the partitions using parted and fdisk (after doing what is writted in that article, that is writing a new number of heads to the drive), i lost my data partition (parted or fdisk reported it to be FAT32, the other did not, and winxp couldnt read it aswell ["this drive is not formatted, wanna format it now?" NO]), but fortunatly i was able to restore my important data (that is, some docuemnts and most importantly, my game saves ) using some recovery software.
In the end I decided to delete all my partitions (after copying what i managed to recover to C: drive) and to re-create the D partition.

After that I used Acronis PartitionExpert (which seems to cause less conflicts with linux than PartitionMagic) to have this partition table (will edit later to show output from fdisk and parted):
hda1: 10GB FAT32 (C: my winxp partition)
hda2: 58GB FAT32 (D: my data partition, for winxp)
hda3: 5GB ext3 (/)
hda4: extended partition for the rest of drive
hda5: 4GB ext3 (/home)
hda6: 1GB linux-swap

Now, I want to install FC2 again, so I want to prevent my previous problem using the preventive measures described in that article :doing fdisk -l to get CHS and then using "linux hda=C,H,S" in order to install with the correct geometry.

Here the confusion begins.

According to fdisk, CHS = 9964,255,63
255 may be incorrect because that is the vaule that was written with that sfdisk -H255 command in the article.
According to sfdisk, CHS = 15881,16,63

and according to this data sheet from maxtor, CHS should be 16383,16,63

Btw, parted still complains about that "unable to align partitions properly" thigie.

I hope I didn't "over-explained". What I really would like to do is to find out the true geometry of the drive, and use it with the installer.

I don't understand much in drives, so if someone can answer me this please do: Isn't the geometry (CHS) of a drive is a permanat thing that is supposed to be stored in the drive itself? So how come every problem tells me a different story?

Again, I hope I didn't make a mess from my post, if something wasn't clear, tell me and I'll do my best to clear things up

[Ug]

(I can't help - but people take note, this is how to ask a question!)

[cyborg]

When I did XP with FC2 I only had the one ext(9.5gig) and the swap(500mg) it works fine.

[Equisilus]

From my reading, it would appear that the important value to avoid/fix this problem is the one for Heads. Information supports the fact that the 255 value would be correct, as it is the "16" that is the "incorrect" report. Apparantly, the cylinders value only needs to be "high" in order for it to work (ie. if the value is more than the actual number, it doesn't matter). Note: I am entirely new to FC2 and Linux in general and this is simply what I understand from what I have read.

I used Norton's PartitionMagic 8.0 to create the partitions needed for FC2 (see my other thread in this forum) on /dev/hdb, I'm using BootMagic to dual-boot between it and WinXP on /dev/hda, and it worked fine without needing to worry about this problem. Checking the drive geometry both before and after installation shows no changes were made to the geometry at all.

Whether any of what I just wrote is helpful or not, I know not, but I thought I'd mention what I learned in my research and installation experience in case it is relevant.

[DXT]

So you're saying that the CHS values from fdisk are the correct ones? Well, I thought so to, but how come the data sheet pdf from maxtor themselves says otherwise? :/

I just don't get a basic thing: I realize that each partition program (fdisk, sfdisk, parted) takes it's info (CHS values) from the mbr (or do they?). So how come each tool tells a different thing, and isn't there some method to know the right, exact and absolute CHS values for my drive?

[sayonara]

I had some problems like that when I was installing FC2. The most controllable and stable way I've come across if to use parted off the FC2 CD. I just removed everything, partitioned it the way I wanted and since then I've had no 'windows doesn't boot' or 'misaligned partitions' problems.

I would be slow to trust my data to partition magic or some other on-the-fly partitioning software. I wouldn't go anywhere near my HD with PM unless I had a full and complete backup up of everything, so for me there's no point.