- - -------- David Wroght, > Quoting hawk (hawk@fac13.ds.psu.edu):
The original partition table was: Primary1 Primary2 Primary3 Extended EXT2 FAT0 UFS FAT1 FAT2 Spare That is, there was plenty of unused space in the extended partition. However, FreeBSD can't handle these, so I needed a primary partition large enough to take the tarball. All of my primaries were taken, so I deleted the extended partition, knowing that I could recreate it later. The new table became Primary1 Primary2 Primary3 Empty Primary 4 EXT2 FAT0 UFS (FAT1 FAT 2) FAT 4 > Are we to assume that you deleted the extended partition because > you already had three primary partitions before it in the table? Yes. In hindsight, it would have made more sense to delete 2 and use that entry where I created FAT4, or to have untarred in linux while FAT4 was still a primary, but it had been a very long day fighting with the machine, and I wasn't thinking that clearly any more. > What, FAT1 FAT2 and FAT4. Are we to guess that you've tried to put > all three in the new extended partition? Yes. I'd learned in the past when DR-DOS shifted my partition table (1-2-3 become 2-3-4, 4 gets lost. I've seen this about 3 times from DR-DOS fdisk on at least two different machines) that you can recreate the extended partion and recover your logicals. It didn't occur to me that I couldn't make the primary a logical . . . > I take it the two former *logical* partitions survived, and that the > singular partition with the backup did not. And that you redeleted > the extended partition before you tried to recreate FAT4 as a > primary partition. Yes. I deleted FAT4, then gave the area from FAT1, FAT2, and FAT4 to the extended, and recreated all three on their former cylinder boundaries. > I think you have trampled on the start of your FAT4 partition if > and when you tried to make it a logical partition. Each and every > logical partition has an extended partition table at its start, so > you should have left a gap before FAT4 when you first created it. this makes sense, and is consistent with the error messages. > (This might have allowed you to recreate FAT4 as a primary partition, > though I have no idea whether it would help in changing it into a > logical partition.) > You might as well try. I don't think you can recover the partition > because (I would imagine, I haven't done the arithmetic) both FATs > have probably been overwritten by the extended partition table. --
