GNOME Bugzilla – Bug 434700
0.3.4-04192007 beta doesn't handle Dell 4600 install partition
Last modified: 2010-02-22 16:55:27 UTC
Please describe the problem: This is approximately a 4GB FAT partition, hidden, where the windows installation files are stored. 160GB is beginning to look a mite small for a HD. there are 2 hidden partitions, a special utils/diag partition of some sort, and the windows install partition, and the bootable XP partition in the middle. the only partition that would not copy was the windows install partition (the last one), which I targeted at the end of the drive. Steps to reproduce: 1. copy last partition of original Dell 4600 Hard disk. 2. 3. Actual results: the shell said "File system doesn't have expected sizes for Windows to like it. Cluster size is 2k (0K expected); number of clusters is 16006(63666 expected) size of FAT is 63 sectors(249 expected)." Expected results: FAT partition should be copied. Does this happen every time? unknown. takes too much time to find out. (250GB) Other information: GParted is slow.
this happens repeatedly, as long as: 1. I start gparted afresh 2. I move the partition to the end of the disk.
it fails when it tries to check the filesystem (currently /dev/hda2) of the fat16 partition. it's got a strange way to boot - it's not like it's normal DOS. still, it should be able to check the partition I should think. will attach files when system is back up.
Created attachment 87296 [details] gparted_details.htm #4 is where check failed on /dev/hda2, the fat16 partition. I forgot what #3 and #0 were. I think you can ignore -1 because it was successful.
I let this one for the main dev (Plors). Please, make prayers for he comes back before ages :-p
if you were to give me the commands to dd this FAT16 partition if you need it, I could gzip it (it's small enough) and I could make it available to you. it comes out to 7MB uncompressed I think. a 31MB partition.
it turns out this offending FAT16 partition is an "EISA Configuration" partition. that's the title that comes up within computer management|disk management within XP. it fails when the partition is "grown". (is that needed when the operation is copy? I am just a user)
Is this still an existing bug? There had been no activity for almost 3 years now
From re-reading this bug report, it would appear that the problem is that GParted is unable to resize a FAT16 file system that is 4 GB in size. This was a problem with libparted versions prior to version 1.9.0. Libparted is a library from the Parted project. http://www.gnu.org/software/parted/index.shtml Hence I am marking this bug as a duplicate. *** This bug has been marked as a duplicate of bug 573190 ***
for some reason I don't think I was getting the emails. in any case, I stopped using gparted (due to its touchy nature) to upgrade my dell disks and started using fss casper 5.0 to do the job and it works great. I am currently at 1TB. I am poor. I have no way to test because I do not have a larger hard disk to grow to (though I could probably use one). I can hope that I will get enough money to get a 2TB hard disk and that it will work. I have heard of problems with 2TB hard disks on XP, I think, but I would need to do more research.
Thank you Jim for originally filing this report and for responding to questions. It is bug reports such as yours that help us to improve GParted. Unfortunately this bug report arrived at a time when the original author was winding down development work on GParted. The bug with resizing a 4 GB FAT16 file system has been fixed with libparted versions >= 1.9.0. Newer versions of libparted are included on GParted Live if you would like to try using GParted again (e.g., GParted Live 0.5.1-1). Again, thank you for your interest and your efforts to help us improve GParted. :) Sincerely, Curtis Gedak (Maintainer of GParted)
yahoo! :-D now (hopefully) it will at least copy the EISA config partition without trying to grow it. I am not sure why it tried to do that. perhaps it has something to do with cluster size? the original operation I was trying to do was a copy (if you read the original description). my complaint was that if it did a copy at all, it did a copy and grow. on my (now 1TB) disk there are 3 partitions migrated from the original dell setup: 1. 31MB FAT Healthy EISA Config 2. 927.33GB NTFS Healthy (System) samsung1000 (C:) 3. 4.15GB FAT32 Healthy (Unknown)
oops. not eisa config partition. the "original complaint" was about the windows recognizes as (unknown) partition that was FAT32. the partition in question is partition number 3. I have long since forgotten, but I am going by what I wrote down in the problem. perhaps if I boot ranish I can get the partition type (hex code) for you.
I have to admit that now I am confused about what is the actual problem being reported. Could you try the latest GParted Live 0.5.1-1 with the task you wish to try? Then if there is a problem please save the gparted_details.htm log file and post it here along with details of what you were trying to accomplish.
when I do get the chance to do that, where is it located?
GParted Live (a self contained small GNU/Linux distribution) is available from the download page: http://gparted.sourceforge.net/download.php