Linux distro's not recognising correct hd size/can't install Linux !!SOLVED!!

**irish** · 07-12-2005

i've looked at custom partitioning but it's not recognising that my hd has 20gb.
Custom partitioning sees only 1gb or 1.9gb
what am i doing wrong?

**anomie** · 07-12-2005

Even if you delete all partitions on /dev/hda you only have 1.9GB space to work with?

**irish** · 07-12-2005

always seem to have only 1.9gb to work with, but this is a 20gb hd?

**LondoJowo** · 07-12-2005

When you run Fdisk what size does it report?

Did you delete all partitions using Fdisk?

**irish** · 07-12-2005

I seem to have gotten my hd in a mess, fdisk won't let me delete anything now and it's in a catch 22 situation. Primary drive can't be deleted due to logical drive in existence. Extended drive can't be deleted due to logical drive etc...
right I've just booted up the xp cd to install xp and at the setup disk stage the 19471MB disk that I have is currently looking like this
c: partition1 NTFS 1049MB
F: partition2 Unknown 213MB
G: partition3 Unknown 752 MB

Unpartitioned space 17457 MB

the last time I used Fdisk it appeared to be fine so I tried to install suse and I think that's what the F and G partitions are (and C)
Why can't I get the unpartitioned space to be included and how can I get all of this to work? I'm still smiling though

**irish** · 07-12-2005

Okay, I used the XP setup cd to delete the parttions and then loaded up the fdisk using a w98 se floppy. Fdisk /mbr then I rebooted without formatting and loaded up the suse install cd. Now it says,
partitioning
create swap partition 377MB on /dev/hdd1
create root partition 1.5GB /dev/hdd2 with reiser

still no sign of my 20gb hd?

**LondoJowo** · 07-12-2005

Ok we'll have to break out Gdisk to fix this problem.

Down gdisk and unzip to your bootdisk.
http://www.arte.unipi.it/Public/DOS/gdisk.zip

Run the follow commands once you've booted up.

Code:

gdisk 1 /del /all

Code:

gdisk 1 /mbr

This should fix your problem.

**irish** · 07-12-2005

Thanks for that LondoJowo. I ran the gdisk command and received no partitions to delete
the gdisk mbr command reinitialised the mbr so here we go again

**irish** · 07-12-2005

Okay, got gdisk working and tried installing suse and once again I have the same poorly recognised hard drive
swap with 377mb and root with 1.5gb
This is really confusing me now

**LondoJowo** · 07-12-2005

It sounds like your harddrive is gone.

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