Grub and Partition Magic 8.0 disagree -- which is correct?

[rapidrain]

With WinXP already on the system and lots of space between the primary partition and the extended partition, I was able to install a 64bit linux on a second primary partition on disk 1.

And it put in Grub for dual booting. Fine.

Now when I am in WinXP my Partition Magic 8.0 starts with a menacing message :

on disk 1 the length of the data partition in the data table is incorrect. 
CHS length 4209030 LBA 4208368. Shall I correct this?

Way back 10 years ago, I remember having a similar message and subsequently butchering everything. I wish to avoid this so :
what is the proper way to proceed? ignore Partition Magic? follow its suggestion? Upgrade Partion Magic?

Do the Linux and Windows Universes perceive partitions in different manners?

Thanks for any tips.

[Dapper Dan]

I had this exact thing happen too years ago and lost a lot of valuable files when I let Partition Magic "fix" the problem. It fixed it all right! My advice (from this experience) is to never let Partition Magic do anything other than show you the partition table. Have you tried firing up Gparted in Linux? What does it say?

[rapidrain]

Thanks for the tip.

With Gparted....I'm going to have to reinstall openSuse for the third time in 8 days. I lost the internet connection again. Gparted....is that a gui ?

[oz]

Gparted....is that a gui ?

Hello and welcome!

Yes, it is. I'd recommend running it from a liveCD such as the Parted Magic LiveCD, or the Gparted LiveCD. You can do a quick online search for them to find the downloadable ISO files for each, then create the liveCD for whichever one you decide to use.

[srj]

I wouldn't trust 'Partition Magic's' advice, especially now when you have a Linux partition it can't recognize.

Gparted is a free partition editor that works in Linux and it's an equivalent for your 'Partition magic'

You could also 'fsck' your hard disk from Linux to see if it returns errors. (just be careful with it).