how not to initialize HD

[JB]

Paul Cartwright <ale <at> pcartwright.com> writes:

> 
> On Sat July 31 2010, JB wrote:
> /dev/sda1   *           1        4462    35840983+   7  HPFS/NTFS
> /dev/sda2            4463        4717     2048287+   e  W95 FAT16 (LBA)
> /dev/sda3            4718       12162    59793409    5  Extended
> Partition 3 does not end on cylinder boundary.
> /dev/sda5            4718        5961     9989120   83  Linux
> /dev/sda6            5962        8094    17133291   83  Linux
> /dev/sda7           11919       12162     1951744   82  Linux swap / Solaris
> /dev/sda8            8095       11918    30716248+   c  W95 FAT32 (LBA)
> > Note that fdisk shows Extended partition as sda4, but cfdisk skips it. It
> > is a matter of formatting the displays by both. The layouts were done by
> > these Linux utilities.
> 
> /dev/sda5 is / and /dev/sda6 is /home. Can I just delete sda3 & sda5 without 
> touching /home on sda6? or will deleting sda3 remove everything... If so, 
> that wouldn't both me that much.
> What i really want to end up with is XP on /dev/sda1 and Fedora on SOMETHING..
> 
Paul,
this is your new layout (after removing sda2), please use it from now on:
> # fdisk -l

   Device Boot      Start         End      Blocks   Id  System
/dev/sda1   *           1        4462    35840983+   7  HPFS/NTFS 
/dev/sda3            4718       12162    59793409    5  Extended
Partition 3 does not end on cylinder boundary.
/dev/sda5            4718        5961     9989120   83  Linux
/dev/sda6            5962        8094    17133291   83  Linux
/dev/sda7           11919       12162     1951744   82  Linux swap / Solaris
/dev/sda8            8095       11918    30716248+   c  W95 FAT32 (LBA)

To answer your question - do not attempt to delete sda3 (extended partition),
fdisk would remove everyting that is included in it (sda3 thru sda8).

I see that the removal of sda2 did not solve our problems; it even complains
about partition 2, which does not exist now:
> # cfdisk -Ps
> FATAL ERROR: Bad primary partition 2: Partition ends in the final partial 
> cylinder

We will try to solve the second thing that may be the problem, that is
the out-of-order sda7 and sda8 within sda3 extended partition.

Before doing that please save your sda8 (W95 FAT32) data somewhere (Win XP,
CD-RW, CD-R, external disk, ...). It will be destroyed later on.

Let me know when you have done it so we can go ahead with remaining stuff.
JB