GNOME Bugzilla – Bug 681331
GParted hangs on Dell Utility partition
Last modified: 2013-10-05 15:45:41 UTC
GParted scans for a long time and finishes with a "!" on Dell Utility partition. See Parted Magic bug report here: http://forums.partedmagic.com/viewtopic.php?f=3&t=3375 He has attached a disk image file that can easily be used to duplicate the problem. Proposed solution: Scan FAT16 with "dosfsck -V" and check for errors/garbage before using the "dosfsck -a -w -v " command. A warning should be issued on how to fix the problem in Windows. This obviously is not a GParted bug, but GParted shouldn't be hanging like this either. If you wait for the file systems to load and try to check the Dell Utility partition, GParted becomes sluggish and then locks up. GParted should load quickly as usual and simply refuse to deal with the bad file system. The bad file system can still be deleted or reformatted in it's current state, so at least the user can get rid of it. If you need anything else, let me know.
Hi Patrick, it is good to hear from you. Would you be able to provide more information? Specifically: What is the output from "dosfsck -V" on one of these Dell partitions? How long does "dosfsck -V" take to run on an Dell partition? What are the instructions for fixing this problem in Windows? If I recall correctly, Windows does not assign a drive letter to the Dell partition. As you are probably aware, the problem with dosfsck taking a very long time to determine the number of used/unused sectors has been reported previously. See, Bug #569921 - dosfsck -n delays device scan
*** This bug has been marked as a duplicate of bug 569921 ***