Hi there Paul, "Paul W. Abrahams" wrote:
Today I spent several hours trying to configure a second hard drive with this arrangement:
hdc1 500MB spare (I called it AIX to call it something) hdc2 Extended hdc5 Linux type 83, 3GB hdc6 Windows Fat16, 500MB hdc7 Windows Fat32, 2GB
My first attempt was to create the partitions in Yast (the version that comes with SuSE 6.2). The first problem was that although Yast could create hdc6 as a DOS partition (type 6), the `configure filesystems' screen couldn't see it. It turned out that for the sake of `configure filesystems', I needed to use type e (Win95 Fat16 (LBA)).
Then, when I changed the type and went over to Windows, I discovered that Win98 thought that the Linux partition was in fact a Windows partition, since it was listed among the drive letters as I could tell from the size. Even more entertaining, there was a discrepancy between Windows fdisk and Windows itself; Windows fdisk got it more or less right.
The way I eventually managed to get a set of partitions acceptable to both systems was to create the spare partition under Linux fdisk (since Windows fdisk won't create non-Windows partitions), go over to Windows, create an extended partition there, make 3 Windows partitions, go back to Linux, and change the first one to type 83. Yuck!!! It also turned out that Windows made the extended partition type f, though Linux made it type 6.
Is there a document somewhere that explains how all the different fdisks relate to each other, and ditto for the variations on the FAT partition types?
I don't know of any useful sources of information about this, but if you find some will you pass it on to me? I ran into the problem above just before Christmas, and I even lost a nice(?) OEM Windows 98 installation because of it :( . Linux tends to make extended partitions as type 5 (you did mean 5 didn't you?), as this is how it used to work. What I discovered was that FAT32 partitions needed type f, which is known as 'Win95 extended', as opposed to just plain 'extended'. My theory is that this is required to get FAT32 partitions to be happy inside an extended partition and to support large disks under Windows' FAT32 format. My problems all vanished when I finally investigated the 'Win95 extended' partition type in fdisk. I suppose you could say the type f extended partition is the 'FAT32' extended partition, and that type 5 partition is the 'FAT16' extended partition. Just remember, this is just conjecture. I'm sure I'll be corrected where I'm wrong (notice the where, not an if...). Hope that helps, even if only slightly, Chris -- __ _ -o)/ / (_)__ __ ____ __ Chris Reeves /\\ /__/ / _ \/ // /\ \/ / ICQ# 22219005 _\_v __/_/_//_/\_,_/ /_/\_\ -- To unsubscribe send e-mail to suse-linux-e-unsubscribe@suse.com For additional commands send e-mail to suse-linux-e-help@suse.com Also check the FAQ at http://www.suse.com/Support/Doku/FAQ/