bad partition or is it?

daven1986 · 6 Dec 2006 at 23:15

Hi, when i look at one of my drives in partition magic it says the drive data is bad. however when i tried to install linux it said:

these are partitions on my drive:

/hdb5/ starts from sector 0 and goes to sector X format NTFS
/hdb6/ starts from sector X and goes to sector Y format extended
/hdb6a/ starts from sector Y and goes to sector Y format NTFS

does this mean if i format hdb6 to ext3 then i can install linux on this? i want to keep hdb5 intact. should i remove hdb6a too then merge the two?

thanks

daven

ByteJuggler · 7 Dec 2006 at 02:12

daven1986 said:
Hi, when i look at one of my drives in partition magic it says the drive data is bad. however when i tried to install linux it said:

these are partitions on my drive:

/hdb5/ starts from sector 0 and goes to sector X format NTFS
/hdb6/ starts from sector X and goes to sector Y format extended
/hdb6a/ starts from sector Y and goes to sector Y format NTFS

does this mean if i format hdb6 to ext3 then i can install linux on this? i want to keep hdb5 intact. should i remove hdb6a too then merge the two?

thanks

daven

Sounds like you've secondary/logical partition entry (hdb6a) in an extended partition table (which is iteself an entry called hdb6 in the primary partition table.)

I would suggest deleting hdb6a then hdb6, then re-create a *primary* *partition* at e.g. hdb1 or so, giving it partition type Linux. Then format it ext3 or whatever and install Linux on it if you want.

(To be safe, make sure everything that's valuable is backed up before you start.)

daven1986 · 7 Dec 2006 at 09:04

i was just going to add that the drive is accessible in windows, and that says it is NTFS format.

ok so in the install i will delete both those partitions then make a new one in their place.

this shouldn't harm hda5 though should it? the reason i ask is i have no practical way of backing up 70gb of data. none of it is really important though.

thanks

daven

ByteJuggler · 7 Dec 2006 at 11:56

daven1986 said:
i was just going to add that the drive is accessible in windows, and that says it is NTFS format.

ok so in the install i will delete both those partitions then make a new one in their place.

this shouldn't harm hda5 though should it? the reason i ask is i have no practical way of backing up 70gb of data. none of it is really important though.

thanks

daven

It should not harm it no.