Help needed in formatting an USB Harddrive

[vasanthd]

Hello all human race,
I am pretty new to this hard drive partition table and stuff like that and I need your help in formatting an USB HD. Since this section deals with HD stuff, I found it feasible to post it here. I have a 60GB laptop harddrive in an external USB case splitted into NTFS, Fat32, Fat32. All I need to do is remove all partitions and have just one single Fat32. The device gets mounted automatically in my Fedora linux. I used "fdisk /dev/sda" to partition. But when I do all those add delete etc etc, and just after choosing the "w" (write table to disk and exit) option, I get the following messages/error:

The partition table has been altered!

Calling ioctl() to re-read partition table.

WARNING: Re-reading the partition table failed with error 16: Device or resource busy.
The kernel still uses the old table.
The new table will be used at the next reboot.
Syncing disks.
[prompt]


And upon reboot, i still see the old partition and the data intact. The reason why I use linux for partitioning is because windows does not recognize the multiple partitioned USB harddrive. Linux however mounts the Fat stuff and r/w is possible. So I want to make this a single Fat32 to use in both windows and linux.

I also want to know if this partition table info seems OK?? This is the partition which I want to remove and make it as single Fat32.

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Disk /dev/sda: 60.0 GB, 60011642880 bytes
255 heads, 63 sectors/track, 7296 cylinders
Units = cylinders of 16065 * 512 = 8225280 bytes

Device Boot Start End Blocks Id System
/dev/sda1 * 1 1912 15358108+ 7 HPFS/NTFS
/dev/sda2 1913 7295 43238947+ f W95 Ext'd (LBA)
/dev/sda5 1913 4462 20482843+ b W95 FAT32
/dev/sda6 4463 7295 22756041 b W95 FAT32

-------------------------------------------------------

Disk /dev/sda: 255 heads, 63 sectors, 7296 cylinders

Nr AF Hd Sec Cyl Hd Sec Cyl Start Size ID
1 80 1 1 0 254 63 1023 63 30716217 07
2 00 0 1 1023 254 63 1023 30716280 86477895 0f
3 00 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 00
4 00 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 00
5 00 1 1 1023 254 63 1023 63 40965687 0b
6 00 1 1 1023 254 63 1
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------



Thanks,
Regards,
Vasanth


__________________
One lucky shot deserves another - Shaq

 

[rvnguy]

vasanthd,

As you have a WINXX PC, I would try to use fdisk from the cmd line to see if you can re-partition the drive(delete the extended and then the primary) and then create a single partition. The USB firmware might interfere with this but it is worth a try.

Hope this helps

rvnguy

"I know everything..I just can't remember it all

 

[dbData]

Win2K and WinXP should be able to "see" the drive and all the partitions if you have the correct USB drivers installed. Using Linux to change the partitions won't change that issue.



Rick

http://www.data-recovery-hub.com