I have largely given up on PM for managing my partitions. PM wants to go to MS-DOS mode for many of its functions, and as soon as it does that it has great difficulty seeing anything beyond 1024 cylinders. (At least it does on my Abit BE-6 M/B) You should be able to change the type of partition at will using any tool. Changing the type won't mess with partition boundaries. It is also possible to mark the type for one OS then format it for another OS -- though this might confuse some OS's -- not Linux, though -- it seems to run happily on a VFAT partition formatted for ext2 -- On Saturday 03 March 2001 18:19, Joseph Zieniewicz wrote:

I installed Mandrake 7.2 on my hdb drive and tried to use Partition Magic 4.0 on it and PM does not see my whole extended hdb2, it just shows a yellow box with "85 linux extended" so I can't use PM. I know you shouldn't mix linux fdisk with PM but Mandrake used fdisk to format the empty space I had on hdb12.

hda4 below still shows "f Win95 Ext'd (LBA)" so PM can see it. hdb2 was "f Win95 Ext'd" before Mandrake messed it up, now it is " 85 Linux extended and PM doesn't see it.

This is my partition table:

Disk /dev/hda: 255 heads, 63 sectors, 1653 cylinders Units = cylinders of 16065 * 512 bytes

Device Boot Start End Blocks Id System /dev/hda1 1 362 2907733+ 1b Hidden Win95 FAT32 /dev/hda2 (d1) * 363 375 104422+ 83 Linux-/boot /dev/hda4 376 1653 10265535 f Win95 Ext'd (LBA) /dev/hda5 376 392 136521 82 Linux swap /dev/hda6 (d2) 393 647 2048256 83 Linux-mntsu63 /dev/hda7 (d3) 648 924 2224971 83 Linux-mntsu64 /dev/hda8 (d4) 925 1267 2755116 83 Linux-mntsu70 /dev/hda9 (d5) 1268 1653 3100513+ 83 Linux-empty

Disk /dev/hdb: 255 heads, 63 sectors, 2434 cylinders Units = cylinders of 16065 * 512 bytes

Device Boot Start End Blocks Id System /dev/hdb1 * 1 267 2144646 b Win95 FAT32 /dev/hdb2 268 2434 17406427+ 85 Linux extended <---- /dev/hdb5 268 270 24066 83 Linux /dev/hdb6 271 287 136521 82 Linux swap /dev/hdb7 (d6) 288 653 2939863+ 83 Linux-su63b /dev/hdb8 (d7) 654 901 1992028+ 83 Linux-mntbak2 /dev/hdb9 (d8) 902 1169 2152678+ 83 Linux-mntjozien /dev/hdb10(d9) 1170 1437 2152678+ 83 Linux-su70b /dev/hdb11(d10) 1438 1705 2152678+ 83 Linux-su70new /dev/hdb12(d11) 1706 2131 3421813+ 83 Linux /dev/hdb13 2132 2162 248976 82 Linux swap /dev/hdb14(d12) 2163 2434 2184808+ 83 Linux-empty

The question is can I use linux fdisk to change type from 85 to f without messing up my hdb? Linux works perfect on my hdb drive, I just can't use PM on it. I used PM in the past on linux without any problems. I had a similar problem with installing Corel linux 1.2 and it took me a while to fix that. Never had a problem with SuSE, that's why I have 3 versions on my comp.

TIA

jozien

-- Never trust a man in a suit cll