Quick and dirty partition table repair?

[Michael D. Setzer II]

On 11 Sep 2011 at 10:55, Tom Horsley wrote:

Date sent:      	Sun, 11 Sep 2011 10:55:51 -0400
From:           	Tom Horsley <horsley1953 at gmail.com>
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Subject:        	Quick and dirty partition table repair?
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> I've been rearranging a disk with gparted and it left
> me with this:
> 
>    Device Boot      Start         End      Blocks   Id  System
> /dev/sdb4            2048   976773119   488385536    5  Extended
> /dev/sdb5            4096    51204095    25600000   83  Linux
> /dev/sdb6        51206144   976771071   462782464   83  Linux

>From my understanding, an extended partition is not a partition 
that can be directly mounted. Rather it contains the other 
partitions that are within it. You can see that /dev/sdb5 and 
/dev/sdb6 are the logical partitions within the extended partition.

With basic partitions, you have the 4 physical partitions than can 
be the first one, but you can also make an extended partition that 
can the have logic partitions.

I'm not an expert on all parition options, but in being the 
maintainer of the g4l project have worked with a number of things. 

Hope that helps.


> 
> If I try to mount the partitions at boot time, something
> gets very confused by the extended partition being /dev/sdb4
> instead of /dev/sdb1.
> 
> Is there a quick way I can move the 4th primary partition entry
> to the 1st primary partition entry?
> 
> Or is a hex edit and extreme care my only hope?
> 
> Or maybe it would all be simpler if I just DDed the one partition
> I'm trying to keep to a file, reinitialize the disk from scratch,
> and then DD it back (making sure to make the partition the identical
> size).
> -- 
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+----------------------------------------------------------+
  Michael D. Setzer II -  Computer Science Instructor      
  Guam Community College  Computer Center                  
  mailto:mikes at kuentos.guam.net                            
  mailto:msetzerii at gmail.com
  http://www.guam.net/home/mikes
  Guam - Where America's Day Begins                        
  G4L Disk Imaging Project maintainer 
  http://sourceforge.net/projects/g4l/
+----------------------------------------------------------+

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