is it possible to change logical to primary partition?

babo · Guru Joined: 10 Aug 2004 Posts: 477 Location: Ljubljana

So, the story goes:

I Installed gentoo on a lap top with previous windows instalation. For some reason windows was installed on /dev/hda5 which is a logical partition made from extended partition on /dev/hda1.
So I made boot, root and swap partitions for gentoo instalation.
Now it looks like so:
/dev/hda1 extended partition
/dev/hda2 linux boot
/dev/hda3 linux swap
/dev/hda4 linux root
/dev/hda5 windows on logical p. made from hda1

Now you can boot into gentoo, but not into windows, couse windows is not on primary partition.

Does anyone know of any solution to this situation?
My thoughts were if it is possible to change hda1-extended and hda5-logical to hda1-primary with parted without loosing data.

Thanx in advance

Sven Vermeulen · Posted: Mon Mar 28, 2005 7:55 pm Post subject:

Does Windows really need to reside on a primary partition, or would it be sufficient to mark the logical partition as "Active"?

babo · Guru Joined: 10 Aug 2004 Posts: 477 Location: Ljubljana

well, I read that windows has to be primary for grub to be able to boot into it.

How do you mark logical partition as "Active"?

Sven Vermeulen · Posted: Mon Mar 28, 2005 8:09 pm Post subject:

Grub doesn't care. Really, just point the root (hdX,Y) command to the correct partition (you can use tab completion when in Grub's interactive shell) (or rootnoverify if the partition is in NTFS) and run chainloader +1.

I don't know if Windows itself supports it or not though.

To turn a partition active, you need to toggle the active bit. Both fdisk and cfdisk can do this. I think fdisk uses the "a" command to toggle a partition active.

babo · Guru Joined: 10 Aug 2004 Posts: 477 Location: Ljubljana

It didn't work

I have:

Sven Vermeulen · Posted: Mon Mar 28, 2005 8:46 pm Post subject:

http://www.gentoo.org/doc/en/grub-error-guide.xml#doc_chap3

If that isn't the cause, then yes, chances are that Windows doesn't like being on a logical partition.

No, you cannot just change a logical partition to a primary partition without repartitioning. So, make a backup, repartition and replace your backup.

babo · Guru Joined: 10 Aug 2004 Posts: 477 Location: Ljubljana

Thank you
Tomorrow is the day for backup and repartitioning

cyrillic · Posted: Mon Mar 28, 2005 9:57 pm Post subject:

FYI :
Windows requires a primary partition for its bootloader (NTLDR).
Linux does not require any primary partitions. You can have /boot swap and / on logical partitions.

NewBlackDak · Posted: Mon Mar 28, 2005 10:43 pm Post subject:

You can use device mappings in your bootloader to fool Windows into thinking it's on a primary partition.
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