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Ubuntu Partition tool messed up HD

W

w00t

Diamond Member
1.tried to make a separate partition
2. made the partition too large (it was in MB and i accidentally made it 16?GB)
3. resized the main HD back to original suddenly it's saying that used is 180GB

I need to get my HD back to it's original size without messing up my windows part (65.4GB). It shows up in windows as 180GB I need it to go back to I think it was 298GB. I would really like to fix this ASAP I am furious at that partition tool.....
 
doh... im not too familiar with ubuntu partitioning tool, i did everything manually. hopefully someone will reply with some info. good luck!
 
the drive in windows

okay i found out what happened but still haven't been able to fix it

my chkdsk in windows told me that there is unallocated space on the drive and to fix it just chkdsk /f but it seems another program is using it which is bad because it wants me to restart which is bad because the computer doesn't restart it's a known problem with the motherboard. how can i do a chkdsk /f ......... I am going to go into safe mode and try to do it from there because It says a process is using it.

 
You can't chkdsk /f while the volume is in use and if it's the Windows volume it'll always be in use, even in safe mode.

But chkdsk shouldn't really fix that, unless it's just the free space count but that's not what you said. If the partition is just smaller than the rest of the disk you'll have to resize it back up just like you made it smaller.
 
All partition tools are borked. They can't be trusted... Partitions are simply not designed to be resized in this manner.

I am not saying that you shouldn't use it or that it's not the partitioner's fault it messed up. I am saying that you realy realy realy need to back everything up _right_now_ while you still have access to it.

After that then try messing around with it some more.
 
Originally posted by: Nothinman
You can't chkdsk /f while the volume is in use and if it's the Windows volume it'll always be in use, even in safe mode.

But chkdsk shouldn't really fix that, unless it's just the free space count but that's not what you said. If the partition is just smaller than the rest of the disk you'll have to resize it back up just like you made it smaller.
Click to expand...

no it's free unallocated space I need to get it back

I already did that with the tool partition magic says it is complete chkdsk says there is free unallocated space.

I need to run the chkdsk but my computer doesn't restart it turns off than turns back on but there is nothing displayed on the monitor it's a known problem with the motherboard. Anyone have any other suggestions how to get my free unallocated space back?
 
No, his question was how did you install Ubuntu if you can't ever reboot the box.

Whatever voodoo you have to do to get Windows to boot back up will work with the chkdsk thing too, just run it and tell it to schedule for the next boot up. Do your voodoo and it should run fine.
 
I didn't really install ubuntu yet since seeing that the partition tool messed up my drive. It's a live cd than there is an icon saying install ubuntu that you click to install 🙂
 
I just tried it still didn't work

partition magic shows up as 320GB and shows no partitions

windows shows 180GB

I need to fix this badly....
 
you still have to reboot to boot the live CD, and then reboot into windows to see what you see now...


first things first is a backup
 
i turned off my comp put the cd in and than it came up with the ubuntu menu where i selected install ubuntu than it brought me to a ubuntu desktop than there is an icon you can press to install ubuntu which I clicked but I never completed it after checking the partition things and it messing up i excited out of it than turned off my comp than turned it back on and took the cd out and booted into windows during this dskchk ran and verified files and such. I than checked the HD after it saying i was using alot more space than I was before it said that my HD total space was a 180GB. I can try to boot into ubuntu and see what I can do....... I have homework right now tomorrow I'll mess around with it after school

EDIT: I just hope this is reversible without messing up my windows files I originally thought it was going to be f-ed after I saw what that ubuntu tool did
 
Originally posted by: drag
All partition tools are borked. They can't be trusted... Partitions are simply not designed to be resized in this manner.

I am not saying that you shouldn't use it or that it's not the partitioner's fault it messed up. I am saying that you realy realy realy need to back everything up _right_now_ while you still have access to it.

After that then try messing around with it some more.
Click to expand...

Well I have to disagree with you on this one. The partition tools are NOT borked. Some are more idiot proof than others. What is a partition anyway? It is just a table of numbers defining what is what on the disk. The partition tool edits these numbers to achieve the desired effect. This is a simple explaination I know. In most cases of the partition getting screwd up is due to a power outage, or interruption of the tool when writing data, or operator error. 99% of these three are operator error. Such as this clearly is.

OP,
Back-up your data and start over, as you clearly do not understand what you are dealing with, chances are it will only get worse. At least if you back it up you will have your data.

pcgeek11

 
The partition tool edits these numbers to achieve the desired effect.
Click to expand...

And then it has to play with the filesytem to make it fit within the new numbers, or vice versa if you're shrinking, so it's a lot more complicated than just editing the numbers in the partition table.
 
Originally posted by: Nothinman
The partition tool edits these numbers to achieve the desired effect.
Click to expand...

And then it has to play with the filesytem to make it fit within the new numbers, or vice versa if you're shrinking, so it's a lot more complicated than just editing the numbers in the partition table.
Click to expand...


No shlt? That is why I stated this:

This is a simple explaination I know.
Click to expand...

There is a hell of a lot more, but... most of the time problems are from the user and interruptions. NOT caused by the partitioning software. I wasn't trying to explain the entire partitioning process.

Partition Table = " A 64-byte data structure that defines the way a PC's hard disk is divided into logical sectors known as partitions. The partition table describes to the operating system how the hard disk is divided. Each partition on a disk has a corresponding entry in the partition table. The partition table is always stored in the first physical sector of a disk drive. "

pcgeek11
 
No shlt? That is why I stated this:
Click to expand...

Yes, but your "simple explanation" completely skipped the part where they have to understand and process the filesystem inside the partition. Even if you didn't say any more than that it should have at least been mentioned since it's the most complicated and error-prone part of the operation. And I have to disagree with your opinion that most partitioning tools aren't b0rked, well, at least the ones like PQMagic that let the user shuffle stuff around like cup game. There's a reason that most of those tools like, like parted, are stuck in a perpetual beta state and only end up supporting the most basic of operations.
 
So you are saying that you can't restart. However you can turn off your computer then push the power and boot up again? If that is the case you should just have the computer schedule a check with chkdsk /f. Then shut down your computer and boot back up I think chkdsk will still run even if you don't use the restart option.
 
Originally posted by: Nothinman
No shlt? That is why I stated this:
Click to expand...

Yes, but your "simple explanation" completely skipped the part where they have to understand and process the filesystem inside the partition. Even if you didn't say any more than that it should have at least been mentioned since it's the most complicated and error-prone part of the operation. And I have to disagree with your opinion that most partitioning tools aren't b0rked, well, at least the ones like PQMagic that let the user shuffle stuff around like cup game. There's a reason that most of those tools like, like parted, are stuck in a perpetual beta state and only end up supporting the most basic of operations.
Click to expand...


Well OK. You have a right to disagree if you like. But with common sense and a little knowledge the tools work fine. I've been working with partitions etc for about 20 years and have never had a partitioning tool " Bork " one up. We all have different experiences though. That is mine.

pcgeek11
 
Originally posted by: pcgeek11
Originally posted by: drag
All partition tools are borked. They can't be trusted... Partitions are simply not designed to be resized in this manner.

I am not saying that you shouldn't use it or that it's not the partitioner's fault it messed up. I am saying that you realy realy realy need to back everything up _right_now_ while you still have access to it.

After that then try messing around with it some more.
Click to expand...

Well I have to disagree with you on this one. The partition tools are NOT borked. Some are more idiot proof than others. What is a partition anyway? It is just a table of numbers defining what is what on the disk. The partition tool edits these numbers to achieve the desired effect. This is a simple explaination I know. In most cases of the partition getting screwd up is due to a power outage, or interruption of the tool when writing data, or operator error. 99% of these three are operator error. Such as this clearly is.

OP,
Back-up your data and start over, as you clearly do not understand what you are dealing with, chances are it will only get worse. At least if you back it up you will have your data.

pcgeek11
Click to expand...

ya, I guess that's why i fixed it

after getting ubuntu off the disk i got my space back yet grub kept loading and my windows wouldn't boot so i had to fix the boot files after doing that windows booted and I have my HD space 🙂
 
OP,

Why were you mad at the part tool?
This tells me it was user error.

1.tried to make a separate partition
2. made the partition too large (it was in MB and i accidentally made it 16?GB)
Click to expand...

Well it appeared to me and several others here ( it seems by the comments ) that you didn't know what you were doing as you stated ...

it wants me to restart which is bad because the computer doesn't restart it's a known problem with the motherboard.
Click to expand...

it turns off than turns back on but there is nothing displayed on the monitor it's a known problem with the motherboard.
Click to expand...

And then you say this ...

put the cd in and than it came up with the ubuntu menu where i selected install ubuntu than it brought me to a ubuntu desktop than there is an icon you can press to install ubuntu
Click to expand...

That means that it will boot, reboot etc...

i excited out of it than turned off my comp than turned it back on and took the cd out and booted into windows
Click to expand...

That means it booted again... but you say that it will not restart? WTF! You talk in circles.

I am glad you recovered your drive anyway.

pcgeek11
 
Well I have to disagree with you on this one. The partition tools are NOT borked. Some are more idiot proof than others. What is a partition anyway? It is just a table of numbers defining what is what on the disk. The partition tool edits these numbers to achieve the desired effect. This is a simple explaination I know. In most cases of the partition getting screwd up is due to a power outage, or interruption of the tool when writing data, or operator error. 99% of these three are operator error. Such as this clearly is.
Click to expand...

Partitions are just not ment to be resizable, that's all. There are thousands of different things that can go wrong and all sorts of weird crap happen.

For instance take this situation on how bizzare things can be with partitions:
I built a computer for my parents a few years ago. A gaming system with XP home.
A couple months ago my little brother was updating the OS with latest patches from Microsoft. He let the patch stuff download and install and he went to bed. In the morning he woke up and it was asking to reboot, and he clicked 'yes' and it rebooted. After the bios ran all the way through it's song and dance it went to read the windows boot partition and it just sat there.
No XP hanging, no error message, no bios error message, etc etc. Nothing just stopped outputting to the screen and sat there.

Told my brother over the phone about fixmbr and the recovery console and he did that and it made no difference.

My brother in law is working at a college as admin and he looked at it and couldn't figure it out.

Told my brother to go and download and burn a copy of Knoppix and it was able to read the files and such in the windows partition with no problem.

so it took me a week or so before I had a chance to play around with it. I booted it with Knoppix again and checked it out. Everything seemed fine, didn't see any file corruption.

I decided to try to install Debian on it using Knoppix and see what happenned.. so I did a minimal install and installed grub figuring if the windows bootloader was messed up I might be able to get the linux one to jump start it.

Grub complained that it couldn't read the partition.

I took the drive out of the computer and stuck it in another one... it booted up just fine.

I put it back into the original machine. I figured I try a bios update and see if that made a difference because by this time I assumed that the motherboard was just f-ed at this point and the IDE stuff wasn't running correctly, but I wanted to try different things.

So I had extra 50gigs worth of drive space that I never used when I built the machine. (which is normal for me.. if I don't see the need for a entire drive to be aviable then I leave a bit unpartitioned.. because you know I don't trust partition resize tools)

So I made that a fat partition. downloaded a bios update stuff and stuck it in there, because it needed to be ran in DOS.

I didn't have DOS and I didn't have a floppy drive in that computer so I burned a FreeDOS cdrom to run the program. I booted it up into FreeDOS, choose 'don't load any drivers' option and I couldn't access the partition.

So I thought maybe I didn't do the knoppix stuff right, like maybe I forgot to mount it or something odd happenned. So I used Freedos utilities to format the partition and I made a small text file on the partition just to double check.

Then I booted it back up in Knoppix, mounted the partition.. and all the BIOS update stuff I downloaded was on still on it. (wtf)

So I booted back up into FreeDOS and chose the 'don't load drivers' option and I accessed the partition and it had the text file in it that I put into it from Freedos originally. (wtf)

So then I rebooted and this time choose to load all the drivers. I accessed the partition in Freedos and now all the BIOS update stuff was there. So I gave up and ran the bios update tool, which worked fine.

Of course after that then it still wasn't booting...

So I reformated and reinstalled Windows, made sure to do all the updates and got the ones that caused the problem in the first place and it worked fine.

Now I have no clue and I would love to have somebody explain to me how a Windows update would corrupt my partition tables. Also why if I mounted the partition with Freedos and no drivers it would see one set of files, but then when I loaded it with drivers it would see another set... Even after I formatted it a couple times.

If that doesn't convince you of the utter bizzare nature of x86 bios's and their braindead-ness and how something as simple as a Windows update would work perfectly fine on one computer would completely bork on another...

Different BIOSes react differently. Different fdisk-like tools setup the MBR slightly differently. The partition resize tools do their own molestations and have their own bugs. There was a issue with either the Fedora Core 3 or 4 tools were the installer setup the bootloader would cause it to fail on certain types of motherboards although it functions 100% reliably on other types.

I just don't like partitioning em that much. I'll use them as a convience without much problem and they almost always work, but I don't trust them to work. But they work then they'll save me having to reinstall everything. And if they don't then that's not a big deal because I was going to do it otherwise anyways.
 
That is a great story.... and the bottom line is you do not Know What it was that Borked up your drive or what exactly was Borked up about it.

pcgeek11
 
Well I definately know that it had something to do with the partition tables and how the different systems reacted to different things that were wrong with it.

Like the FreeDOS stuff seeing the partition information differently based on what drivers it was using, and how one machine had no problem booting Windows or Linux, but on the other it was messed up.

 
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