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    The most annoying and stupid problem on LS50a

    Discussion in 'LG' started by gatuno, Sep 19, 2005.

  1. gatuno

    gatuno Newbie

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    Hello everyone!
    Last year I bought a LS50-CUVP, and I'm facing a problem that I can´t solve ANYWAY!
    This is what's happening:
    My HDD (60 GB on Recovery mode or ~55 GB on normal mode)
    had 3 partitions:
    30 GB NTFS
    10 GB Linux Native
    5 GB FAT32
    ~10 GB free space, because of a Linux partition I've deleted.
    What I wanted to do was to erase the Linux and the 5 GB FAT32 partitions and to make my hdd become a "dinamic disk", to be able to expand the 30 GB partition to the maximum disk space without loosing any data.
    So, I went to the Windows Control Panel, Administrative Tools, computer management, disk management and I right-clicked on "Disk 0" and selected "convert to dinamic disk".
    The computer restarted and it then said it couldn't boot.
    Well then I thought that I could use the "F11" button to access my recovery system (LG Recovery) to make things run okay again. But when I did that, I got a message saying "Operating system missing"....
    Oh well... No O/S... No Recovery partition... Well... what am I going to do now?... hmmm.. If the recovery partition is not working, and besides, the software that it would install on my pc is WinXP SP1, not SP2, I decided to delete it from my hdd to get the approx. 5 GB I'm missing!
    So, I rebooted the PC, pressed F11 again (as I can't access it from the normal boot) and booted the SuSE Linux installation CD to use fdisk and erase the recovery partition! (Not sure but I think it was a FAT32 partition...).
    The result was:
    Normal mode:
    54 GB
    Recovery mode:
    60 GB
    ...
    Now my most stupid problem is:
    How to make my BIOS use the FULL disk in normal mode??? (60 GB)?...
    I've tried everything I know, since partition magic, to installing windows on the recovery mode, but this d*mn BIOS is so stupid it doesn't understand that I want to get rid of this partition!!!...

    If someone knows how to do this, PLEASE help me!
    Thank you in advance
    Pedro Farinha
    [email protected]
     
    gatuno, Sep 19, 2005
    #1
  2. Xplodin

    Xplodin Notebook Consultant

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    Ok for starters i dont even know why u are partitioning ur hdd for muliti OS. Yeah sure it can be done and yeah people have done it before, but i would never do that, Just have 2 partitions and install it on the one partiotion, I'm sure linux can read NTFS and Fat32 so thats like no problems.

    Also if ur HDD is 60gb then that means its unformatted, once formatted the size reduces to about mid 50's. Not quite sure what your tryin to ask.
     
    Xplodin, Sep 20, 2005
    #2
  3. MWP

    MWP Notebook Guru

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    He is correct with the partitions he is trying to setup.

    XP cant access any type of Linux partition.
    Linux cant have write access to a NTFS partition.
    Linux can have full access to a FAT32 partition (hence the need for it).
    He should also have a Linux swap partition.

    As for the extra partition thing...
    I have no idea whats going on there...
    What is telling you the extra partition exists?

    My new LW70 didnt have any kinds of extra partitions.
     
    MWP, Sep 21, 2005
    #3
  4. cheziyi

    cheziyi Notebook Consultant

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    In industrial standards 1GB is 1000MB, while in computer language 1GB is 1024MB, and so on and so forth. And when you add your formatting of your harddisk, your usable space reduces even more. Therefore, 50+GB worth of space left is perfectly normal.

    EDIT: And for some distros of linux some can not even read ntfs.
     
    cheziyi, Sep 22, 2005
    #4
  5. gatuno

    gatuno Newbie

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    now i know the right name of that thing. it's the HPA (Host protected area). Do you have an idea of how to disable it??

    cheerz!
     
    gatuno, Jul 11, 2006
    #5
  6. Jalf

    Jalf Comrade Santa

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    A 60GB harddrive is actually only 55.9 GB. (Because HD manufacturers count 1 GB as 1000 KB, rather than 1024)
    On top of that, any partition needs some space for file index and other overhead. So which number you see depends on where you look.
    When you create the partition, it *should* say you have a 55 or 56 GB disk (probably). When you've created the partition and check your free space, it will report... well, less than that. Might be 54 GB, or might be 50.

    Not sure what you mean by "normal mode" though. Where do you read these numbers?

    I don't have any experience with HPA, but I'd assume that got wiped too when you formatted your disk. Are you sure that's what's taking the missing GB? (If, like I said above, anything *is* missing at all). If the HPA still exists, it can't be more than 1-1.5 GB.
     
    Jalf, Jul 11, 2006
    #6