Last year, I bought a Presario CQ62-225NR running 64 bit Windows 7 Home Premium. With the recent release of Natty, I’ve decided to take the plunge and try out the Unity interface. In preparing the hard drive for dual booting Ubuntu, I shrunk the C: Windows partition using Disk Manager and deleted the D: RECOVERY partition.
The 200mb hidden SYSTEM boot partition and the 100mb E: HP_TOOLS partition were untouched.
So far so good. I now have an unallocated block of free space roughly 140 GB in size between the Windows Partition and HP_TOOLS partition. Disk Management shows the three remaining partitions to be healthy.
However, after I boot into the Gparted live-CD, I’m presented with a small mess. Every partition is lite up with caution signs. A new partition that doesn’t appear under Disk Manager has popped up out of nowhere. And all the labels have now been shifted.
In short, before partitioning:
/dev/sda1; ntfs; SYSTEM; 199mb; boot
/dev/sda2; ntfs; [no label]; 286.29gb
/dev/sda3; ntfs; RECOVERY; 11.5gb
/dev/sda4; fat32; HP_TOOLS
After partitioning, as reported by Gparted:
/dev/sda1; ntfs; SYSTEM; 992.5kb --- {Warning:Unable to read the contents of this file system! Because of this some operations may be unavailable. The cause might be a missing software package. The following list of software packages is required for ntfs file system support: ntfsprogs.}
/dev/sda2; ntfs; [no label]; 199mb; boot --- {Warning: unable to read the contents of this file system! Because of this some operations may be unavailable. The cause might be a missing software package. The following list of software packages is required for ntfs file system support: ntfsprogs.}
/dev/sda3; ntfs; HP_TOOLS; 156.68gb --- {Warning: ntfsresize v2.0.0 (libntfs 10:0:0) Failed to startup volume: invalid argument. ERROR(22): Opening '/dev/sda3' as NTFS failed: Invalid argument. The device '/dev/sda3' doesn't have a valid NTFS. Maybe you selected the wrong partition? Or the whole disk instead of a partition (e.g. /dev/hda, not /dev/hda1)? This error might also occur if the disk was incorrectly repartitioned (see the ntfsresize FAQ). Unable to read the contents of this file system! Because of this some operation s may be unavailable. The cause might be a missing software package. The following list of software packages is required for ntfs file system support: ntfsprogs.}
Unallocated; 141.11gb
/dev/sda4; fat32; [no label]; 103.34mb --- {Warning: Can't open /dev/sda4: No such file or directory. Cannot initialize 'H:' mlabel: Cannot initialize drive dosfsck 3.0.9 (31 Jan 2010) dosfsck 3.0.9, 31 Jan 2010, FAT32, LFN open: No such file or directory Unable to read the contents of this file system! Because of this some operations may be unavailable. The cuase might be a missing software package. The following list of software packages is required for fat32 file system support: dosfstools, mtools.}
I have no idea how to interpret these results. The whole point of repartitioning was to free up one of the 4 primary partitions for the use of Ubuntu. If Gparted is to be trusted, it appears Windows 7 has for unspecified reason conjured up a new first partition and carefully hidden that fact from normal processes. Appearance-wise, nothing has changed in Windows. I can still boot the machine normally and do all the computing I did before with no ill effect. But I’m back to square one with all partitions occupied and no room for Ubuntu.
I took the precaution of saving a disk image with Clonezilla before starting this adventure. Though the computer can run Windows just fine right now, I may choose to find out soon if the stored image can properly restore everything. Then I’ll have another go at repartitioning the HD to get Ubuntu installed. However before I do so, can anyone shed some light on what happened and tell me how to avoid the same results?
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Re: Does HP/Windows 7 play dirty with normal HD partitioning practices?
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