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After upgrading to Ubuntu 10.04, none of my graphic partition utilities (GParted, KVPM) can detect any partition table. GParted displayes my /dev/sda as "unallocated." I have also run sudo fdisk -l and gotten the following:

Disk /dev/sda: 120.0 GB, 120034123776 bytes
255 heads, 63 sectors/track, 14593 cylinders
Units = cylinders of 16065 * 512 = 8225280 bytes
Sector size (logical/physical): 512 bytes / 512 bytes
I/O size (minimum/optimal): 512 bytes / 512 bytes
Disk identifier: 0xd8000000

   Device Boot      Start         End      Blocks   Id  System
/dev/sda1   *       14267       14594     2620416    c  W95 FAT32 (LBA)
/dev/sda2              10        1315    10485760    7  HPFS/NTFS
/dev/sda3   *        1315        6276    39852216+   7  HPFS/NTFS
/dev/sda4            6277       14594    66807327+   f  W95 Extd (LBA)
/dev/sda5           14267       14594     2620416   dd  Unknown
/dev/sda6            6277       13935    61520886   83  Linux
/dev/sda7           13936       14266     2658726   82  Linux swap / Solaris

Partition table entries are not in disk order

To be honest, I am not exactly a superuser (but I know some things), so I'm having trouble understanding just what all that means. My goal is to eliminate all my existing Windows partitions (I currently dual-boot between Ubuntu 10.04 and Windows Vista) to free up space for linux. I tried burning an Ubuntu 10.10 CD and re-booting, hoping that GParted would work then, so I could just graphically destroy Windows and re-size my root partition, but no dice. Same results.

Any help? What's a good command-line based partition editor that can accomplish my goal of eliminating Windows from my life? Or is there some way to get the graphical ones to work again? And why did upgrading to Ubuntu 10.04 mess with my partition table?

2 Answers 2

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Same upgrade made changes to the partition tables on all my drives, linux could use them, windows could not boot from them, new partitions weren't enough, a clean install of windows to the empty drive didn't boot untill I killed the partition table. I had to rebuild the partition table to get windows working again. You are not alone.

Symptoms were windows booting to a blinking cursor. Grub was displaying a number of errors before booting.

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I don't think your partition table is messed, OTOH I have no idea why the GUI tools don't work. I would try something like SysRescueCD or Trinity Rescue Kit to do the job.

BTW that's a small disk you have there. With the current prices of storage, I'd recommend getting a larger (and faster!) disk and copying your Ubuntu partition on it, leaving Windows on the old one. As an added benefit you will have a real Windows to go back to in case you need it.

Judging from your disk, I don't think your PC has the power to run a virtualized guest, so having a native Windows environment could be useful in case you need to use something that just doesn't work with Wine.

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  • Thanks for the response. Actually, I do have a fairly fast PC. 4GB memory, 2.something GHz dual-core processor. For some reason I ended up with a small hdd. Wasn't thinking... got my Dell refurbished, so I was pleased to find something decent for a good price. My goal is, in fact, to run Windows 7 as a virtualized guest. Basically I'm sick of rebooting to watch Netflix, haha.
    – eaarthman
    Apr 12, 2011 at 0:32
  • I see :) well my advice still stands. If you don't care about noise or power consumption, the WD Caviar Black 1TB is plenty fast and spacious. Their Blue line is more balanced, and a 640GB Blue costs about 60$ online.
    – plco
    Apr 12, 2011 at 2:28

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