On Sunday 02 May 2004 23:26, Victor Odhner wrote:
> Dale Farnsworth wrote:
> > It's been a long time since I saw a compressed windows "drive", but
> > if I remember right, it would call the primary partition D: and
> > C: is a virtual partition contained in a hidden file in D:.
> >
> > So, there probably is only one partition.  Try running fdisk.
>
> Ditto been a long time, ditto I think C is inside a file in D.
>
> Possible strategy:  is it possible to hook another physical
> disk up to this system?  Then you could unload a bunch of
> the C drive contents onto it while you get a foothold.
> You'd do this under Windows, clean out the compressed
> volume, and then see where you stood.
>
> The main operating partition shouldn't be compressed.
> That would be dog slow.
>
> But an implication of this is that there's not all that
> available space on the D drive -- it's probably filled up
> with the C volume.  If you look at that one partition with
> Linux, as a FAT or NTFS volume, how much free space does
> it see?
>
> I hope this is not an ignorant rant, but consider that
> as a possibility.  ;-)
>
> Good luck,
>
> Vic

     Aha!
     Great tips from both Dale and Vic. Thanks, guys!
     Yes, there's a single physical partition (hence the fact that hda1 is 
*almost* the same size as *hda*). The partition id is 44 -- a "GoBack" 
partition that is supposed to let the owner "roll back" to a previous version 
of the disk but, after booting M$ and running the utility, it complains the 
program itself is damaged and it can't roll-back. ("Heal thyself," stupid 
program!)
     Looks like I'm committed to a complete re-install (which was pretty much 
in the plan already) and setting up the dual-boot configuration as originally 
planned.
     Knoppix allowed me to do a complete backup of all files over the network 
to another machine (via "scp" -- thank you, Linux) so I can rest assured that 
nothing will be lost in the process, and to peek and poke to understand the 
mess that someone else had created. Booting Knoppix from a CD to 
non-invasively examine (and backup) the hard drive is great. Thank you, 
Knoppix. (I'm a believer!)
     Lot's of button pushing to do now but I've got my feet on solid ground 
again.
     Thanks again to all!

P.S.: Before I finish with the dual-boot installation and return the notebook, 
maybe I should make the M$ re-install run like shit again. Hmmm...

-- 
Ed Skinner, ed@flat5.net, http://www.flat5.net/

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