Partitions: Dual Boot PC: Windows7 and Ubuntu10.4

[pratikparikh]

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Background/Environment:
Hello, My computer is dual boot.
During booting I can select Ubuntu 10.4 or Windows 7.


This PC has 2 hard-disks.
Hard-disk1: 80GB: Linux and WindowsOS are installed here
Hard-disk2: 1 TB: For data storage. 400GB is unallocated and remaining 600GB is allocated to four volumes (All are NTFS) which is visible in Windows as well as in Ubuntu.

Problem1 : Now I want to create 2 more volumes of 50GB each using this 400GB unallocated space of Hard-disk2. I want to use these 2 volumes in both Ubuntu as well as in Windows7.
Should I do it from Windows or from Ubuntu? If yes, How?




Problem2 : gparted/Fdisk is only showing the analysis of Hard-disk2 as a big 1TB disk. It is not able to see those 600GB allocated space and those 4 volumes. Why? Is there anyway to fix it or do you recommend any other software tool.



Thanks in advance.

Note: Windows 7's disk manager is analyzing both the hard-disks correctly and it is even allowing me to create a new volumes in those 600GB unallocated free space.

Following information might be useful to the linux experts in the analysis of these problems.
================================================== =========

root@Nathdwara:~# fdisk -l

Disk /dev/sda: 80.0 GB, 80000000000 bytes
255 heads, 63 sectors/track, 9726 cylinders
Units = cylinders of 16065 * 512 = 8225280 bytes
Sector size (logical/physical): 512 bytes / 512 bytes
I/O size (minimum/optimal): 512 bytes / 512 bytes
Disk identifier: 0x12a812a7

Device Boot Start End Blocks Id System
/dev/sda1 * 1 2435 19559106 7 HPFS/NTFS
/dev/sda2 2436 9725 58556925 f W95 Ext'd (LBA)
/dev/sda5 2436 4870 19559106 7 HPFS/NTFS
/dev/sda6 7306 9725 19438618+ b W95 FAT32
/dev/sda7 4871 7198 18699628+ 83 Linux
/dev/sda8 7199 7305 859446 82 Linux swap / Solaris




Partition table entries are not in disk order

Disk /dev/sdb: 1000.2 GB, 1000204886016 bytes
255 heads, 63 sectors/track, 121601 cylinders
Units = cylinders of 16065 * 512 = 8225280 bytes
Sector size (logical/physical): 512 bytes / 512 bytes
I/O size (minimum/optimal): 512 bytes / 512 bytes
Disk identifier: 0x5e7f8d7f

Device Boot Start End Blocks Id System
/dev/sdb1 1 121601 976760001 42 SFS
root@Nathdwara:~#

Following entries are there in /etc/fstab

# /etc/fstab: static file system information.
#
# Use 'vol_id --uuid' to print the universally unique identifier for a
# device; this may be used with UUID= as a more robust way to name devices
# that works even if disks are added and removed. See fstab(5).
#
# <file system> <mount point> <type> <options> <dump> <pass>
proc /proc proc defaults 0 0
# / was on /dev/sda7 during installation
UUID=2a1bd8f5-fe32-46e2-abbd-ea8a5ae52a58 / ext3 relatime,errors=remount-ro 0 1
# swap was on /dev/sda8 during installation
UUID=ff168730-9fa9-4ab7-aa1c-a8652432a5ee none swap sw 0 0
/dev/scd0 /media/cdrom0 udf,iso9660 user,noauto,exec,utf8 0 0
/dev/fd0 /media/floppy0 auto rw,user,noauto,exec,utf8 0 0

~
================================================== ==================
Now here is the mount command output...

root@Nathdwara:~# mount
/dev/sda7 on / type ext3 (rw,relatime,errors=remount-ro)
proc on /proc type proc (rw)
none on /sys type sysfs (rw,noexec,nosuid,nodev)
none on /sys/fs/fuse/connections type fusectl (rw)
none on /sys/kernel/debug type debugfs (rw)
none on /sys/kernel/security type securityfs (rw)
none on /dev type devtmpfs (rw,mode=0755)
none on /dev/pts type devpts (rw,noexec,nosuid,gid=5,mode=0620)
none on /dev/shm type tmpfs (rw,nosuid,nodev)
none on /var/run type tmpfs (rw,nosuid,mode=0755)
none on /var/lock type tmpfs (rw,noexec,nosuid,nodev)
none on /lib/init/rw type tmpfs (rw,nosuid,mode=0755)
binfmt_misc on /proc/sys/fs/binfmt_misc type binfmt_misc (rw,noexec,nosuid,nodev)
gvfs-fuse-daemon on /home/shiva/.gvfs type fuse.gvfs-fuse-daemon (rw,nosuid,nodev,user=shiva)
root@Nathdwara:~#

[oldfred]

Windows has converted your drive to sfs. That is a window proprietary partition scheme that windows does not use anymore. It is something like LVM in linux as dynamic partitions. It is a workaround to the MBR 4 partition limit.

http://www.linuxforums.org/forum/red...ilesystem.html
http://www.vistax64.com/server-gener...asic-disk.html

With MBR/msdos you can have 4 primary partitions. When they quickly notice that was a limit they made it that you could convert one primary to an extended and add many logical partitions inside the extended. Windows will read logical NTFS partitions. Linux both boots & reads from logical partitions.

Apple and newer windows servers have converted to gpt for large drives. It is an alternative to MBR, but windows will not boot from gpt unless it is an efi system.

http://www.sevenforums.com/tutorials...asic-disk.html

[srs5694]

The Partition Wizard software for Windows is supposed to be able to convert dynamic disks to regular partitions without data loss, so it may be what you need to get around this problem; however, I've never used it and so I can't be sure it will work.

Another option might be to create volumes in Windows and then use mkfs in Linux to convert them to Linux partitions. (Linux can read and write Windows dynamic disks, but AFAIK there are no utilities to modify the volume definitions in Linux.) I'd be a bit reluctant to do this, though, since I'm not sure how Windows will react to one of its NTFS or FAT dynamic volumes turning into a Linux filesystem. In a worst-case scenario, it might not react initially, but then do something very damaging when you launch some obscure utility.