Partition Magic messed disk. help?

former_at_pm.user
Date: 06/29/04 

Date: Mon, 28 Jun 2004 22:24:02 GMT

Hi,

An error in Partition Magic did something to my partition
table; all the PM help people can say is to wipe the disk and
start over. Does anyone have a better answer? (Also, linux
users: avoid PM.)

My hard disk looks approximately like this:

   1 primary partition
   2 primary partition
   3 primary partition
   4 extended partition
   5 logical partition
   6 logical partition
   7 logical partition
   8 free space

I dual boot linux and windows from separate partitions. I
need to free up another primary partition to install freeBSD.

Originally, I used to Partition Magic to partition my empty
disk. Recently I used PM to check the disk; it found no
errors.

Since PM says that it will convert between primary and logical
partitions, I then asked it to convert 3. That looks like a
reasonable request since partition 3 is just before the
extended partition. At most, partition 3 might have to be
moved back a cylinder, but PM can do that (I think).

PM failed with error 108 (partition table error) and refuses
to touch the disk any more. The funny thing is the both linux
and windows continue to boot and run normally. All partitions
continue to be accessible w/o any apparent problems. cfdisk
sees no problem.

So, my questions are:

1. What might PM have done? Should I / can I fix it?

2. Is there any other way to free up a primary partition?
Copying partition 3 to 8 would work, I suppose. Is that the
best idea?

Thanks for your help. I've spent at least a full day
researching partitions over the last few months and still need
help.

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