inaccessible and confused partitions

[bluebell]

...to recap, i installed win98 and then SuSE on my machine, and then was unable to access linux. i used fdisk to create the dos partition, then the suse installer (hda1 dos, hda2 /boot, hda3 swap, hda4 /).

lots of people recommended using partition magic, so i borrowed it off my friend - it threw up some interesting things, like telling me that hda4 is suspposedly /boot (boot magic also identified hda2 as being the linux partition, as if it had the OS on it) and hda4 has an error with the 'end cylinder' which is set to a lower value than it ought to be. it also said that there was no free space on hda4, it was all in use which is impossible as its 12G.B and i havent even been able to access it yet. however i can't see any way of changing this with partition magic, it was simply telling me there was a problem.

did you mean that i ought to use it to create partitions afresh, wiping everything on my machine? it doesn't seem to support making ext2 partitions, although obviously i haven't tried to do that yet. i'm really confused, all i know is that i can't get into linux at all, and i don't know how to fix the problems with the partitions if i cant even get into the system.

(btw, another thing i noticed when i was trying to fix it by reinstalling suse was that it seemed to have 'forgotten' the mount points of the ext2 partitions, and only remembered the swap.)

oh, and my dos is not FAT32, just FAT.

has anyone else had these problems, or have any idea what the problem could actually be and how to fix it? -i posted the boot sequence errors in my last post if that helps.

:eek:

[Dark Ninja]

When you are using Partition Magic, they key is to remember the 'right clicks.' Everything in PM is performed by right clicking.

I don't know how familiar you are with the program, so don't be insulted if this is too basic, but here's a couple things to remember with Partition Magic:

1. Make sure you have created unallocated space before you try to create any new partitions. Partition Magic can't go from FAT to ext2. The unallocated space acts as sort of a buffer in between.

2. I've always had trouble using Boot Magic alongside Partition Magic (although, many people haven't). I prefer just to ignore Boot Magic and use 'older' Linux methods to boot up (Lilo is what I use).

3. It shouldn't matter what KIND of partition it is (FAT, FAT32, ext2, etc). Partition Magic will create any kind from any other kind AS LONG as you remember to create the 'unallocated' space in between going from FAT to ext2.

Hope that helps.


Dark Ninja
http://www.teamvirus.net/