Why does testdisk say my Structure is bad?

[FancyBoy]

Hi,

I recently installed windows 7 next to my ubuntu installation, I had to mess with partitions a bit to get it all to work, now I finally made it work, I can boot nicely from booth of them, but gparted doesn't show my partitions anymore (just says unallocated space), and when I try TestDisk to rewrite my partition table it says structure bad when I configure it as I like it.

Disk /dev/sda - 1000 GB / 931 GiB - CHS 121602 255 63
     Partition               Start        End    Size in sectors
P HPFS - NTFS              0   1  1 13054 254 56  209728505
P Linux                 9790 192  3 16317 213 24  104857600
* Linux                16317 213 25 16330 149 11     204800
L Linux                16330 149 12 120071 145 10 1666598912 [Personal Files]
L Linux Swap           120071 177 43 121601  57 40   24571888

The first partition is a windows 7 partition of 100 GB (NTFS), that I want as a Primary partition
The second one is my Ubuntu partition of 30 GB (ext4), that I want as a Primary Partition
The third one is my boot partition of 100 MB (ext3), that I want as a primary bootable partition
The fourth one is my files partition of 794 GB (ext4), that I want as a logical partition
The fifth one is my Swap partition of 11 GB, that I want as a logical partition.

Why is this not possible? Why is this structure bad, everything works ok atm, except that I can't change partitions or create new partitions because they're not recognized.

Please help me out.

Greets
Fancyboy

[FancyBoy]

bump

[oldfred]

Boot flags always go on windows primary partition. Grub does not use a boot flag, but some BIOS require a boot flag on a primary partition.

Do your partitions overlap? I am not as familar with reading testdisk output.

P HPFS - NTFS 0 1 1 13054 254 56 209728505
P Linux 9790 192 3 16317 213 24 104857600

Start should not be before an end, unless it is a extended partition that is the container for all the logicals.

What does this show?

sudo fdisk -lu

or
sudo sfdisk -luS /dev/sda

Ignore any cylinder boundry type errors.

[FancyBoy]

Disk /dev/sda: 1000.2 GB, 1000204886016 bytes
255 heads, 63 sectors/track, 121601 cylinders, total 1953525168 sectors
Units = sectors of 1 * 512 = 512 bytes
Sector size (logical/physical): 512 bytes / 512 bytes
I/O size (minimum/optimal): 512 bytes / 512 bytes
Disk identifier: 0x00068a3b

   Device Boot      Start         End      Blocks   Id  System
/dev/sda1   *        2048    62916607    31457280   83  Linux
/dev/sda2        62916608   262146047    99614720    7  HPFS/NTFS
/dev/sda3       262146048   262350847      102400   83  Linux
/dev/sda4       262350900  1953536129   845592615    f  W95 Ext'd (LBA)
/dev/sda5       262352896  1928949759   833298432   83  Linux

[oldfred]

That does not show anything wrong. What was testdisk saying was wrong?

[FancyBoy]

Well, just that the structure in the original post was bad, but the problem is that gParted doesn't show any partitions, it just says 'unallocated space'...

Disk utility shows everything correct.

[FancyBoy]

So how do I fix this?

[srs5694]

Actually, there is a problem: The extended partition extends beyond the end of the disk -- it ends on sector 1,953,536,129, but the disk has only 1,953,525,168 sectors. See my Web page on this topic for details and fixes. If you need more help, please post back here.

FWIW, TestDisk itself can create this problem, so its complaining about it is a bit ironic.

[FancyBoy]

Actually, there is a problem: The extended partition extends beyond the end of the disk -- it ends on sector 1,953,536,129, but the disk has only 1,953,525,168 sectors. See my Web page on this topic for details and fixes. If you need more help, please post back here.

FWIW, TestDisk itself can create this problem, so its complaining about it is a bit ironic.

You sir, are an angel, everything worked and everything is fine now, I can see all my partitions in gparted now, I thank you very much!

I'll be marking this as Solved then.