Major Partition Problems

IanthePez

Senior member
Dec 10, 2001
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Well, as the title says I am having some major trouble with some of my partitions.

It all started when I attempted to install FreeBSD on some unalocated space on my harddrive. I thought I did everything correctly but during installation it gave me an error 11 I believe. I decided to just give up for the moment and booted back into windows. The only problem now is that only main partition (c:) is visible. I am using system commander 7 and when I entered the partition manager the second partition is visible as well as the partition on the other hard drive. I can view ALL the files on both partitions from within system commander 7 but when I enter windows, it does not detect them. I tried using the disk management utility in XP but I don't have any options to add a drive letter or anything like that. Both partitions are listed as healthy (unknown partition). Is there anyway I can make windows regonize these two perfectly good partitions again? I suppose I could format but i'd rather not reinstall the tons of things I have on them. Any help would be great.
 

RemyCanad

Golden Member
Sep 28, 2001
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I have the same problem when I tried to install Mandrake Linux on the second partition on my old Win2k comptuer. I let mandrake set it all up. I didn't get any error but some how the windows partion got totaly messed up. I could open it through linux but I could not boot windows off of it. It was all there but I nothing could see in it. Sadly I did not have the time to find out what happend and how to fix it so I just backed up through linux and reformated.
 

IanthePez

Senior member
Dec 10, 2001
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Well, I may just try installing linux and backing up. That wouldn't be so bad.

One thing I did try was looking at the partitions using diskdrake. It listed the Partitions as hidden ifs (identifier 17). I believe I need to set them to identifier 7 which is NTFS. Changing them with diskdrake requires a format. Its there any way to change them without a format? I'm not that keen on installing linux just to backup. Any help would be great.

 

SUOrangeman

Diamond Member
Oct 12, 1999
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FWIW, I understand that FreeBSD *MUST* be installed on a primary partition and within the first 8GB (1024 cylinders) of the drive. I have unsuccessfully tried to install FreeBSD on other parts of my drive many times.

-SUO
 

IanthePez

Senior member
Dec 10, 2001
607
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Well, that sure would make sense :) I just formatted everything and started fresh. I don't mind since I haven't formatted in at least a month :) I'll try installing freeBSD again on my second harddrive and see what happens. I'm going to take the other harddrive out first though, as I don't want a repeat.