[ale] partition does not end on a cylinder boundary huh ?

[Michael Trausch]

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Courtney Thomas wrote:
> 
> Given all the foregoing, what would you change and to what would you
> change it ?
> 

If it is the extended partition, I would try altering the partition
table to fix it and place it on the appropriate boundary.

Microsoft's partitioning tools (especially their older ones) never
played nice with the partitions.  The partitions that are listed in
the MBR (the primary ones, including that "extended partition
wrapper," as I call it, are supposed to start and stop on a
boundary.  Today, most operating systems play nice and that's why
they all interoperate.

Something you might *try* - and don't do this if you're
uncomfortable or uncertain, because you WILL lose data - and even
so, you might anyway - is to try this:

	1.  Write down the *exact* start/end points of each of the three
extended partitions.  Ensure that you're getting the sector numbers
*and* the interpreted C/H/S values.
	2.  Delete the partitions inside the extended partition, and delete
the extended partition.
	3.  Create a proper extended partition, and, within it, create the
old partitions *AT THE EXACT SAME SPOTS AS WAS PREVIOUSLY NOTED*.
This is the location of the filesystem data on the disk.

Write the changes, reboot, and you might have something that works.
 If you do not, I would take other measures.

Ensure that you have a byte-by-byte backup of the drive's contents
(the entire drive, not any partition or another) before trying this,
because you could mess up something nasty, write the wrong sets of
numbers, or any of a hundred other possibilities.

If you'd like, I can put the drive in my Linux system, back the data
from it up on to DVD-Rs, and work with it, and in a worst case
scenerio, take the filesystem data and extract the files from it,
recreating the filesystems later.  It won't be a quick job, but
it'll work.

	Later,
	Mike

- --
Michael B. Trausch                               <fd0man at gmail.com>
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