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parted's cp command for FAT32, and LBA/CHS/NTLDR missing woes
From: |
Andrew A. |
Subject: |
parted's cp command for FAT32, and LBA/CHS/NTLDR missing woes |
Date: |
Thu, 16 Sep 2004 11:00:21 -0400 |
I write this mostly
for intellectual/curiosity reasons, since I've already punted and re-installed
Win2K from CD. I am curious to see if you believe the recent parted
release that fixes CHS/LBA issues would prevent/cure the problems I encountered,
and I am also *really* baffled
I have a working
Win2K partition which is approx 14Gig of a 50G drive Maxtor. I also have
another Maxtor approx 12Gig. I wanted to move the 14Gig bootable partition
to the smaller Maxtor.
For the below, I was
using Win2K Pro from an MSDN subscription and parted/sfdisk/etc. from the Fedora
Core 2 Rescue mode. /dev/hdb is large drive, /dev/hda is small one.
All partitions are FAT32.
(1) Without touching
the partition table on small drive, I used parted cp /dev/hdb 1 1 ... to move
the large partition down. It told me I needed to free up space. I
rebooted into windows, deleted some large files from /dev/hdb and issues the
command again. It completed without a problem. Note: parted
complained of a "fixable" problem in the partition information on
/dev/hdb
Result: NTLDR
missing
(2) I used the
sfdisk -H255 solution to "fix" the partition information on /dev/hda, thinking
that parted might have touched the partition information despite the fact that I
only asked for a copy operation.
(3) I used Win2K
Rescue mode to fixboot c:, fixmbr \Device\Harddisk0\Partition0, fixmbr
\Device\Harddisk0
(4) I removed the
partition and re-partitioned using parted, re-copied the
partition
Result:
Invalid boot disk, insert disk in A.
(5) I marked the
partition bootable using parted
Result: NTLDR
missing
(6) I repeated
steps 1-3.
Result: NTLDR
missing
(7) I removed the partition, and
re-partitioned using Win2K Rescue mode. Then re-copied the
partition.
Result:
Invalid boot disk, insert disk in A.
(8) I repeated steps 1-3 &
5
Result: NTLDR
missing
(9) I got a copy of Partition Magic 7.0 and
used its rescue disks. When it came up, it warned me of a problem in the
partition table of /dev/hda, specifically that the CHS and LBA lengths were
different than the length in the MBR (or was it the boot sector, probably
MBR). I told it to fix the problem
Result: NTLDR missing
(10) I repeated all of the above steps
trying a manual copy of NTLDR/NTDETECT from the Win2K install discs between each
reboot
Result: NTLDR missing
(11) I took a hammer and beat the sh*t out
of the drive, leaving it in small pieces on the floor.
(12) I woke up from my
daydream.
(13) I formatted the drive and re-installed
windows.
QUESTION ---> Given all of the
above steps etc., I am left thinking that (1) The parted cp command somehow
affects the boot information (2) That there might be some dependency
in the windows boot sector code on the physical location of NTLDR, and that
parted's cp somehow either moves NTLDR or otherwise changes that --
specifically, that NTLDR might have ended up beyond some BIOS limit such as a
cylinder > 1024 ?
Any ideas? Do you think spanking new
parted releases avoid these problems?
Parted's cp command is very useful and I'd
love to help make it work for this scenario, thus making it a free laternative
to expensive applications such as Partition Magic, for people relocating Windows
partitions.
A.