Fixing PartitionMagic Error 108

[roadgeek9]

In PartitionMagic 8, I get an error 108 on the partition table. I have a Hitachi 80 GB TravelStar. Is there any way to fix this without reformatting?

Here is my partition setup (approx 74 GiB)...

54 GiB NTFS (Windows), 18 GiB ext3 (Linux), 2 GiB Linux Swap

[markwolfe Veteran]

Can you boot Linux (from drive or LiveCD) and post the output of a

sudo fdisk -l (that is a lowercase letter "L", not the number one)

If you don't use sudo, then just su to root and do the command without "sudo".

This will provide a detailed list out of your partition information.

[roadgeek9]

 Disk /dev/sda: 80.0 GB, 80026361856 bytes
 255 heads, 63 sectors/track, 9729 cylinders
 Units = cylinders of 16065 * 512 = 8225280 bytes
 Disk identifier: 0x005a42a7

	Device Boot	  Start		 End	  Blocks   Id  System
 /dev/sda1   *		   1		7012	56323858+   7  HPFS/NTFS
 /dev/sda2			7181		7377	 1574339   82  Linux swap / Solaris
 /dev/sda3			7377		9729	18900472   83  Linux

[Hurmoth]

Are you using Windows Vista? If so, there's an issue with PartitionMagic and Vista partitions.

[roadgeek9]

I would never, ever use Vista. I use Windows XP Professional SP3 RC1.

[markwolfe Veteran]

You have a strange gap from 7013-7181. That isn't going to be a problem, just difficult to use that space, unless you expand an adjacent partition.

The problem is almost certainly how sda2 uses up to 7377 at the end, and also sda3 uses the same point to start. These partitions cannot share the same data.

Is sda3 readable from within your LiveCD? If so, then the start point for that is probably correct. In that case, delete the sda2 partition, and immediately re-declare it from 7181 to 7376. Keep the 82 type. Reboot, and you should be ok.

P.S. I :heart: the power of *nix commandline

P.P.S. sda2 is swap :pinch: Didn't notice that, oddly enough. It is surely safe to reduce the back end of that by one. (Y)

[roadgeek9]

How do I move the swap partition around? I can't get into PartitionMagic, and my laptop has several problems with Linux CDs (it took me 3 days to get my laptop to recognize the Linux DVD, which is odd because it can read everything else (Windows, DVD Movies, etc.) perfectly).

[markwolfe Veteran]

Then how did you boot Linux to get that information? :unsure:

[roadgeek9]

  markjensen said:

Then how did you boot Linux to get that information? :unsure:

You didn't understand my partition setup...

60 GB NTFS for Windows

18 GB EXT3 for (SuSE 10.3) Linux

2 GB Swap

You see, I have Linux on my computer, it is a dual-boot computer using the Windows NT bootloader.

New Partition Setup...

Disk /dev/sda: 80.0 GB, 80026361856 bytes
255 heads, 63 sectors/track, 9729 cylinders
Units = cylinders of 16065 * 512 = 8225280 bytes
Disk identifier: 0x005a42a7

   Device Boot	  Start		 End	  Blocks   Id  System
/dev/sda1   *		   1		7012	56323858+   7  HPFS/NTFS
/dev/sda2			7013		7376	 2923830   82  Linux swap / Solaris
/dev/sda3			7377		9729	18900472   83  Linux

[markwolfe Veteran]

All I was asking is to boot back into the Linux environment you used to get the initial "fdisk -l" info. Then use fdisk to re-create the swap.

It looks like you did that. Does everything work ok? Does PM still report that error now that you corrected your start/end locations? I hope so, because I don't see anything else wrong with that setup.

[roadgeek9]

Everything is working fine. I used the YaST2 Partitioning Tool, if that is OK. I still have yet to boot back into PartitionMagic to see if the error was corrected.

[TEX4S]

I think I got that error also back when I was tri-booting w/ XP, Vista, and ubuntu ... then PM labeled my Raptor (boot drive) as "Bad" -- but like you I never noticed any issues...

[roadgeek9]

Looks like its all fixed. Mark was right, the Linux Swap and / partitions were overlapping. Now, all is well. Thanks for the help.

[markwolfe Veteran]

Glad your data is safe and all is well (Y)