Newsgroups: comp.os.linux.setup
Date: Thu, 12 Dec 2002 15:16:03 -0400

> The old HDD (Conner CT204 4.3GB ATA-66) which I originally intended to
> install RedHat 8 happened to crash last week and I replaced it with a
> new Western Digital one (10GB ATA-100). But when I try to install
> RedHat 8 after reinstalling Win98 onto the new HDD, the same problem
> that I used to have with the old HDD resurface again.
> RedHat installation complains that the partition table is inconsistent
> and the message given is not very informative on what is actually
> wrong, hence hard to troubleshoot and fix whatever problem it's
> having.
> It reports:
> The partition table on /dev/hda is inconsistent. There are many
> reasons why this might be the case. Often, the reason is that Linux
> detected the BIOS geometry incorrectly. However, this does not appear
> to be the case here. It is safe to ignore, but ignoring may cause
> (fixable) problems with some boot loaders, and may cause problems with
> FAT file systems. Using LBA is recommended.
> And it reports the same problem for /tmp/hda.
> What I suspect now are either:
> (1) my motherboard (Intel AL440LX) BIOS is mis-reporting or Linux is
> unable to obtain the correct geometry information from the BIOS.
> (2) The FDISK.EXE that comes with Win98 are doing partitioning that
> are not compliant with standards.
> If it is case 1, I believe I would have to try to do a BIOS update.
> For case 2, I may have to give up on Win98, clean out the HDD totally
> and remove all partitions made by FDISK.EXE and use RedHat Linux as
> the sole OS.
> So far, running a Google search on Linux newsgroup has not been
> helpful in understanding the problem and how to resolve it. Hope
> someone can help out in this issue. Thanks in advance.
> To aid in understanding the partitioning on my HDD, I've included the
> information as reported by Disk Druid. Currently, I've a primary
> partition to hold my Win98 (2GB) and an extended partition with 1
> logical partition to hold some user's data (2GB). I was planning to
> use the remaining free space (5509M) to create another primary
> partition and a Linux swap for RedHat 8.

Hi,

Based on the information you gave above, I suggest that you

Partition Magic would be quite straight forward. If you don't have it, use RedHat's Disk Druid, or anything but M$ fdisk. :-) The point is "one single tool". Otherwise, there will be endless trouble.

FYI, I now personally think that the sfdisk, which comes with every distro, is the best tool I ever used. I was first scared off by its man pages, and spent lots of lots time in using other tools (like cfdisk, Partition Magic, Disk Druid), and trying to solve the problem arisen from using them. Only after having so many troubles already, did I sit down and read its man pages thoroughly, and play with it on the new disk that I just had. Had I done that early, I won't be dealing the troubles I used to have…

The point: it is good to have new disk to play with. :-) I played with it while my working Win98 and RH8 are all on it! :-)

Good luck!

T