Gparted says HD is all Unallocated

[bilyo]

According to "manage disk partitions" in the Control Center I have the following partitions:

/dev/sda =  (232GB)
/dev/sda1 = Windows (200MB)
/dev/sda2 = Windows7 (73GB)
/dev/sda5 = Lenovo (10GB)
/dev/sda4 = Lenovo (14GB)
/dev/sda6 =  / (12GB)
/dev/sda7 = swap (3.8GB)
/dev/sda8 = /home (118GB)

When I start gparted from the Control Center (Gnome), It shows one 232 GB unallocated harddrive. Can someone explain this?
Thanks

[uncleV]

- What does fdisk -l says? Run it in terminal with root privileges.

- Try Gparted from LiveCD session. May be you have some bug in your installed app?

- May be people in the Gnome section of the forum would know better?
 

[wayne1932]

Not a guru here at all, but it looks like there are some partitions out of order.  I had that happen to me, and I could see everything under my install, but Kpartitionmanager and Gparted, both told me I had 465GB of unallocated space. I finally just reformatted and reorganized the whole disk and now everything appears properly in KPM and GP.  I created root, swap,  and home partitions then created more called MyDocuments, MyPictures, MyMusic and MyMiscellaneous.  then created links in my home to those partitons.  Now unless the whole drive dies, my stuff is safe, and any reinstall or new distro install doesn't touch my data. I have a small partition devoted to nothing but the my base install  of my usual programs that I keep updated and remastered for reinstallation if something gets borked

Sounds like a call for Old-Polack to me.  I don't know whether this can be fixed without reformatting the HD.

[bilyo]

I tried running gparted from the Control Center again and also ran a live CD version. Under "Device Information", both versions said that the partition table is unrecognized. There is a selection for creating a new partition table. Do I want to do that? The system is working just fine. I don't want to screw it up.  

Following is from fdisk:

Disk /dev/sda: 250.1 GB, 250059350016 bytes
255 heads, 63 sectors/track, 30401 cylinders
Units = cylinders of 16065 * 512 = 8225280 bytes
Disk identifier: 0x3bb2cafd

   Device Boot      Start         End      Blocks   Id  System
/dev/sda1   *           1          26      204800    7  HPFS/NTFS
Partition 1 does not end on cylinder boundary.
/dev/sda2              26        9570    76662180    7  HPFS/NTFS
/dev/sda3            9571       30401   167325007+   f  W95 Ext'd (LBA)
/dev/sda4           10915       12826    15358140   12  Compaq diagnostics
/dev/sda5            9571       10914    10795648+   7  HPFS/NTFS
/dev/sda6           12827       14394    12594928+  83  Linux
/dev/sda7           14395       14903     4088511   82  Linux swap / Solaris
/dev/sda8           14904       30401   124487653+  83  Linux

All of the non Linux partitions were created for Windows and were on the computer when purchased

Thanks

[Was_Just19]

According to "manage disk partitions" in the Control Center I have the following partitions:

/dev/sda =  (232GB)
/dev/sda1 = Windows (200MB)
/dev/sda2 = Windows7 (73GB)
/dev/sda5 = Lenovo (10GB)
/dev/sda4 = Lenovo (14GB)
/dev/sda6 =  / (12GB)
/dev/sda7 = swap (3.8GB)
/dev/sda8 = /home (118GB)

When I start gparted from the Control Center (Gnome), It shows one 232 GB unallocated harddrive. Can someone explain this?
Thanks

Either a glitch or a faulty application ... maybe ...

Does it do the same after a reboot?

Are you running it from the root account?   should not

Does it behave the same from another user account?

If your system is running fine then do not do anything to upset it.

[Old-Polack]

I tried running gparted from the Control Center again and also ran a live CD version. Under "Device Information", both versions said that the partition table is unrecognized. There is a selection for creating a new partition table. Do I want to do that? The system is working just fine. I don't want to screw it up.  

Following is from fdisk:

Disk /dev/sda: 250.1 GB, 250059350016 bytes
255 heads, 63 sectors/track, 30401 cylinders
Units = cylinders of 16065 * 512 = 8225280 bytes
Disk identifier: 0x3bb2cafd

   Device Boot      Start         End      Blocks   Id  System
/dev/sda1   *           1          26      204800    7  HPFS/NTFS
Partition 1 does not end on cylinder boundary.
/dev/sda2              26        9570    76662180    7  HPFS/NTFS
/dev/sda3            9571       30401   167325007+   f  W95 Ext'd (LBA)
/dev/sda4           10915       12826    15358140   12  Compaq diagnostics
/dev/sda5            9571       10914    10795648+   7  HPFS/NTFS
/dev/sda6           12827       14394    12594928+  83  Linux
/dev/sda7           14395       14903     4088511   82  Linux swap / Solaris
/dev/sda8           14904       30401   124487653+  83  Linux

All of the non Linux partitions were created for Windows and were on the computer when purchased

Thanks

Note that the first and second partitions share a cylinder. This is a partition overlap, caused by improper partitioning. Also your /dev/sda4 and /dev/sda5 are not only out of order, but /devsda4 by definition is a primary partition, yet it is embedded within the extended partition, between /dev/sda5 and /dev/sda6. These errors are what is causing the partition table to be unrecognized. It is unrecognized because it follows no known standard.

[bilyo]

old-polack,

This is a Lenovo laptop that I purchased new with Windows 7 preloaded along with a couple of Lenovo "recovery" partitions. These are the partitions that you say are screwed up.  I have not used Windows a lot but it does seem to work OK.  And, PCLOS works just fine. This only came up as I was starting an effort to learn gparted so I could resize my PCLOS partitions.
What would you advise me to do about this? Why does the disk management tool in Control Center show all the partitions but not gparted? I assume there is no way to resize my PCLOS partitions with the other partitions in this state?
Thanks

[Old-Polack]

old-polack,

This is a Lenovo laptop that I purchased new with Windows 7 preloaded along with a couple of Lenovo "recovery" partitions. These are the partitions that you say are screwed up.  I have not used Windows a lot but it does seem to work OK.  And, PCLOS works just fine. This only came up as I was starting an effort to learn gparted so I could resize my PCLOS partitions.
What would you advise me to do about this? Why does the disk management tool in Control Center show all the partitions but not gparted? I assume there is no way to resize my PCLOS partitions with the other partitions in this state?
Thanks

Gparted is very fussy about what it will work with. If it finds a screwed up partition table it will not continue, except to create a proper partition table. Only if the partitions are proper will it proceed to actually work with them to resize and such. This is a good thing.

Were it my machine, I'd backup everything on it, create a proper set of partitions, format them appropriately, them reinstall from the backups. While things may presently run in this condition, it's like a time bomb waiting to go off. At some point it will blow up, and valuable data may well be permanently lost. I'd rather bite the bullet and fix it now while one can still access the data, than try later to recover it, after a major crash.

[kjpetrie]

As you have installed GRUB with pclos you have probably already clobbered the rescue partitions as they usually rely on the original customised MBR as well as the special customised partitioning scheme.

I would recommend doing nothing until you understand exactly what recovery system Lenovo use and how it works. Did you make recovery discs before you installed pclos? Once you have proper Windows re-installation discs and know they're good you can wipe everything and start again as O-P recommends. In the meantime, stay away from partitioning tools as they are likely to mess things up further.

[bilyo]

Not what I wanted to hear, but not unexpected either. Isn't it true? About the time you think things are going well, look out, cuz the sky is about to fall.

I did create an image backup of the windows install prior to loading PCLOS.  I also insisted that Lenovo sent me installation disks which they did. The image, of course, will put windows back as is including the Lenovo recovery partitions. I'm not sure what the installation disks will do. I've not used them. After backing up personal stuff, I can easily reinstall PCLOS.

It's interesting that the windows partitioning tools I have show the windows partitions just fine.

As you advise, I guess my best option is to wipe everything and start over.  I'll experiment with the install disks and see if I can install windows without the Lenovo partitions.  Until then, I won't know how many partitions I need to create. I need to do some reading on partitioning so I can do it right. I believe that the windows install disks will create the needed partitions for windows (if you want it to) and, of course, the partitioning tool in CC will do it for PCLOS.  However, I'm assuming that this is not the best way.  Best is to create all needed partitions first. Right?

Thanks