HD Install :: fdisk/cfdisk probs w/large drives?



I've installed DSL 0.82 on the 850MB hard drive of my old P133, and  the 6GB drive of my Sony Vaio laptop, both with no problem. Then I tried it on a 20GB Maxtor drive :(

Neither cfdisk nor fdisk recognized the existing linux & swap partitions I'd created via Partition Magic. I recreated them using
fdisk or cfdisk, and when I try to save the new partition info-
The entire machine locks up (video, mouse) until I reboot.

I have a Knoppix 3.3 Live CD, so I popped it in. Same behavior.

Now here's what's really wierd- I have an old Slackware distribution (7.1). I put that in. It can see the linux & swap partitions just fine, and I was able to install Slackware on this disk!

I used Synaptic to download cfdisk v2.11 from the debian.org site. Same behavior.

If anybody can suggest another course of action, I'm all ears.

Thanks,

Mark
What does fdisk -l  show?
Some utilities allow partitions to be made "out of numerical cyclinder order", i.e., start at end of disk. Sometimes fdisk -l will display a warning. Usually I have had to delete all the partitions and make them with fdisk in cyclinder order to avoid this.
The fdisk -l output looks as follows:

fdisk root@box:~# fdisk -l /dev/hda

Disk /dev/hda: 2113 MB, 2113536000 bytes
64 heads, 63 sectors/track, 1023 cylinders
Units = cylinders of 4032 * 512 = 2064384 bytes

Disk /dev/hda doesn't contain a valid partition table
So, trying to add the partitions:

root@box:~# fdisk /dev/hda
Device contains neither a valid DOS partition table, nor Sun, SGI or OSF disklabel
Building a new DOS disklabel. Changes will remain in memory only,
until you decide to write them. After that, of course, the previous
content won't be recoverable.

Warning: invalid flag 0x0000 of partition table 4 will be corrected by w(rite)

I create partitions:

  Device Boot    Start       End    Blocks   Id  System
/dev/hda1               1         870     1753888+  83  Linux
/dev/hda2             871        1023      308448   82  Linux swap

then try to write them. Excuse me for a moment, this will probably hang my machine...
Sorry for the disjointed posts- issuing the write command at the end of the last example causes the video & mouse to hang.

As I've said before, I've gone through this exercise on the drives of two other machines with no problem. I've also checked the drive jumper settings- it's set as the primary master.

I'm outta ideas at the moment.

Mark
Next Page...
original here.