Windows 7 reports Suse not in extended partition

English Install/Boot/Login
1

I have installed Windows 7 Professional (64 bit version), and OpenSuse 11.2 (64 bit) on to a newly built Core i5 machine. I installed Windows first, with 3 partitions. The 100MB partition Windows reserves, a C: drive for the operating system and a D: drive for data. Both of these are NTFS partitions. I then installed OpenSuse into the unallocated section at the end of the new disk drive. The Linux partitioner showed OpenSuse in an extended partition, containing a swap / /home and /tmp partition.

Both operating systems now appear to be working fine, but I’m worried about the Windows Disk Manager showing that the OpenSuse partions are primary ones, and are not inside an extended partition. It only shows a small amount of unallocated space at the end of the drive as being in an extended partition.

Should I delete OpenSuse and start again? Perhaps creating an extended partition with Windows before trying to reinstall OpenSuse?

If I leave the disk as it is, is it likely to continue to dual boot without something unstable occuring? It may just be a Windows problem which will not be fatal, but I’m worried all my files may get scrambled at a some point in the future.

If anyone can give me some authoratative advice on this I would be grateful.

Thanks

Michael

2

Ignore what windows reports it is complete rubbish. Your only reliable source of disk onfo is from Linux. Open a terminal, become su and do

fdisk -l

post result

Become su in Terminal - HowTo - openSUSE Forums

3

The Windows disk manager, isn’t much use once you have non-Windows partition types around.

Definitely don’t re-install, I should not worry; I have mixed Windows & Linux partitions on disks, without mishaps; and used Windows to format new NTFS filesystems.

If you have to re-partition disk again for some reason, I should do it with Linux tools.

If you need another Windows disk drive, simply setting the partition type to a Windows one, should let 'dows see an empty unformatted disk drive, which it can write a filesystem on.

4

My first question has to be. What install method was used?

5

Here is the output of fdisk -l as requested, and thanks for the help thus far.

Disk /dev/sda: 1000.2 GB, 1000204886016 bytes
255 heads, 63 sectors/track, 121601 cylinders
Units = cylinders of 16065 * 512 = 8225280 bytes
Disk identifier: 0x5050cdf6

Device Boot Start End Blocks Id System
/dev/sda1 1 13 102400 7 HPFS/NTFS
Partition 1 does not end on cylinder boundary.
/dev/sda2 13 8081 64804864 7 HPFS/NTFS
Partition 2 does not end on cylinder boundary.
/dev/sda3 8081 116502 870892544 7 HPFS/NTFS
Partition 3 does not end on cylinder boundary.
/dev/sda4 * 116503 121601 40952520 f W95 Ext’d (LBA)
Partition 4 does not end on cylinder boundary.
/dev/sda5 116503 116765 2101648+ 82 Linux swap / Solaris
/dev/sda6 116765 119376 20971408+ 83 Linux
/dev/sda7 119376 120681 10485688+ 83 Linux
/dev/sda8 120681 120812 1050808+ 83 Linux

Regards

Michael

6

Red are your ntfs primary
Green is a primary but is the Extended
Blue are logical (they are actually inside Green extended)

Not to pretty but it’s OK

7

sda4 is not an actual partition, it’s just a container for the logical partitions (sda5-8).
Take a look at the starting sectors for sda4 and sda5, they’re exactly the same.

Windows is useless for partitions which are not ntfs or fat, don’t trust it!

8

Just curious: to which partition does the cylinder 119376 belong?

9

I know what you are getting at, but this is not uncommon. Ideally it would be this way

/dev/sda5 116503 116765 2101648+ 82 Linux swap / Solaris
/dev/sda6 116766 119376 20971408+ 83 Linux
/dev/sda7 119377 120681 10485688+ 83 Linux
/dev/sda8 120682 120812 1050808+ 83 Linux

That might not be totally accurate, but you’ll find lots of examples where the partitioner ends and starts partitions on the same cyl.

10

Hope the partitions don’t share any of the 8 million bytes of that cylinder.

11

Thanks for the replies folks.

It looks as if I’m safe to carry on with this set up, and I haven’t had any problems to date.

Michael