Partition Manager FAQThis is a list of Frequently Asked Questions in the yahoo group 'partman' (http://groups.yahoo.com/group/partman/). This can be considered a "Getting Started" guide (sort of) for Ranish Partition Manager (RPM) also. This FAQ is with reference to the latest version of Ranish Partition Manager (i.e.) 2.43. But most of the questions are applicable to the earlier version (2.40) too. Please note that the "Partition Manager FAQ" available at http://www.ranish.com/part/faq.htm deals mostly with version 2.37. IMPORTANT NOTE: You are responsible for your data. So please follow the instructions properly & carefully. Otherwise, you might lose your valuable data. There may be other free/commercial utilities than the ones mentioned in this FAQ. As you can understand, it is not possible to list all of them - that is not the intention either. If some utility is missing, it is purely because of the lack of knowledge on my part. Many thanks to all the authors of the free utilities mentioned in this FAQ, PCGUIDE, MAXTOR; also to the authors who contributed to this FAQ indirectly through their answers (to the group). Standard disclaimers apply. - Muthu What are these "primary", "extended" & "logical" partitions? ============================================================ Please see: http://www.pcguide.com/ref/hdd/file/structPartitions-c.html In addition, you can see the "Partitioning Primer" available at http://www.ranish.com/part/primer.htm as well. Two points to remember: 1. You can have only one extended partition 2. The structure of logical partitions within the extended partition (If you use RPM to create logical partitions within the extended partition, RPM will automatically create an additional extended partition also along with the logical partition - except for the first logical partition. This is NOT an error) What is Ranish Partition Manager? ================================= Ranish Partition Manager (RPM for short) is a partition manager which lets you create & manage upto 30 primary partitions on a single harddisk. It includes a Boot Manager (BM for short) which can boot upto 30 operating systems (e.g.) Windows 9x/ME/NT/2K/XP, Linux, FreeBSD, Solaris etc. How is RPM different from other standard partitioning utilities like FDISK? =========================================================================== With standard utilities like FDISK, you can have a maximum of 4 primary partitions only. With RPM, you can go upto 30 primary partitions. For example, if you want to have all the following operating systems on a single harddisk, RPM can help in achieving that for you: Windows 2000, FreeBSD, Linux, Solaris, OS/2, Netware, GNU HURD What are these various versions of RPM that I keep hearing about? ================================================================= Version 2.37: can help you have 30 primary partitions but does not work with disks having a capacity greater than 8GB. Version 2.40: can work with disks > 8GB but does not support more than 4 primary partitions (this is same as version 2.38 but just the version number got changed) Version 2.43: can work with disks > 8GB; also, it can support upto 30 primary partitions. How does RPM work? ================== The very first sector of a harddisk, called Master Boot Record (MBR), contains Initial Program Loader (IPL) as well as the partition table. The IPL code boots an operating system by loading the first sector (boot sector) of that OS partition (into the main memory) and transferring control to that. The partition table describes the partitions (in terms of partition type, where it starts/ends, etc.) in that harddisk. This partition table can have entries for only 4 partitions (and so the limit of 4 with standard partitioning utilities) due to its size in MBR. Normally, each operating system (exceptions: Microsoft operating systems & Linux) requires an entry for itself in the partition table (i.e.) each OS needs a primary partition. Now that you have the background: When you install RPM (either as 'compact' or 'text' BM), it replaces the IPL code of MBR with its own code. From then on, it is this code which boots the operating systems. As RPM can support 30 primary partitions, it needs to store the partition information somewhere else if the number of partitions is greater than four. It does this by storing the partition information in a separate partition (called RPM partition) and reading from there whenever required. While booting, BM too reads the information from the RPM partition and transfers control to the first sector (boot sector) of the selected partition. So, if you want to have more than 4 primary partitions, you need to create a partition for RPM first (you need to install the 'text' BM as well). It does not have to be big (a few megabytes is enough). Normally the last (complete) cylinder of the harddisk will do. RPM lets you assign an MBR row number (1 to 4) for a partition. This number determines the partition's position within the MBR partition table. RPM sets up the MBR partition table also (based on the row numbers assigned to the partitions) whenever you hit the "Save" key. All the other partitions are hidden. Operating systems & other utilities see only this MBR partition table and consider the rest of the disk as "unused". So be careful when you create a partition out of this "unused" space. You might actually be overwriting some other partition! For the same reason, it is suggested you stick to RPM only to create/manage partitions (unless you know what you are doing). Do I need to create the RPM partition always? ============================================= If you are not planning to have more than 4 primary partitions, you don't need to create the RPM partition. [For that matter, you don't need RPM at all :-) in this case (please see the next question)] At the same time, it is not an error if you create the RPM partition for less than 4 primary partitions. Do I need RPM if I plan to have only Microsoft operating systems & Linux? ========================================================================= Strictly speaking, you don't need RPM in this case. You can use the boot loader (grub/lilo) of linux. Also, the number of operating systems does not matter here as these OSes can be booted from logical partitions. See "Microsoft Knowledge Base Article - Q217210" at http://support.microsoft.com/default.aspx?scid=KB;EN-US;Q217210& Some more information: http://www.microsoft.com/technet/treeview/default.asp?url=/technet/prodtechnol/winxppro/proddocs/dual_booting.asp But, if you want, you can use RPM instead. OK. I downloaded RPM version 2.43 (partbeta.zip). How do I install it? ====================================================================== Now you need to read the documentation :-) thoroughly (toughest, isn't it? :-)) in this order (don't skip any): 1. readme240.txt This will give a feel of RPM 2.40 (read this even if you plan to use only 2.43). Ignore only the section on resizing FAT partition (doing this might result in problems). Read the note on CWSDPMI.EXE section as well. You may need it. 2. Trombettworks (http://www.trombettworks.com/multi-boot.htm) This throws more insight into using RPM. But you don't have to follow the installation method mentioned there. Instead, You can follow the installation method explained in the next question. Remember that the ending "head-sector" of all your partitions must always be "254-63" 3. readme243.txt This will tell you about the new features added in version 2.43 along with some general tips. Make a note of "Restoring RPM MBR" (F7 key procedure) The second sentence of this file talks about the inability to boot DOS from the end of 60GB. This may be applicable only for DOS 6.22 and below. The DOS component of Windows 95/98 (sometimes called DOS 7.0) does not seem to have problems with this. Ignore the section (almost at the end) on the interaction between RPM & FreeBSD above 8GB. 2.43 fixed this problem. 4. This FAQ Read completely. There are some nice utilities/information that can help you achieve what you want. I keep seeing the same kind of posts requesting tools/information again & again. The main purpose of this FAQ is to help prevent “reinventing the wheel”. (Sorry that the documentation is available in bits & pieces. Any takers to consolidate all the three? :-)) Is there a quick way of installing RPM? I will read the documents later. ======================================================================== You promise that you read the documents later (if you have not read already). Understanding the concepts is the key to using RPM. Actually I did not want to include this question/answer here. But after reading the posts in the yahoo group, I realise that most people don't read the documents/faq anyway. Anyway :-) here it is. While RPM can be installed in many ways, what I am going to write is the most commonly used (therefore recommended) installation method: If your system already has one or more operating systems/partitions when you decide to install RPM, you need to resize the exising partitions FIRST to make space for an RPM partition (as well as for any future partitions). Please see the questions on resizing FAT/NTFS/ext2 partitions for utilities which can do this for you. You need to make free space (shown as an 'Pri Unused' row in RPM) at the end of the disk. If you are going to install RPM on a new system, no prior resizing is necessary (as the entire disk is free). Steps: 1. Create a bootable DOS floppy and copy part243.exe onto that. 2. Boot with floppy and run part243.exe. The cursor will be placed on 'Master Boot Record' 3. Familiarise yourself with RPM's display (no action required) 4. Press 'Enter'. The cursor will be placed on the bottom right window against 'MBR Executable code:' 5. Press spacebar key repeatedly till you get 'Boot Manager'. 6. Use the down arrow key to go to 'Boot interface type:' 7. Press spacebar key repeatedly till you get 'Text 25x80' 8. Press Enter and you will be taken back to 'Master Boot Record'. Now you will see a message: 'Press INS and create a partition for the Boot Manager' in yellow. This is the RPM parition that you need to create. 9. Move the cursor to the last 'Pri Unused' row and press 'Insert' key. You will get a new window. 10. Select '0xF0 Boot Manager Yes' entry. 11. Allocate a complete cylinder for this partition by following this example: For example, after resizing, my last 'Pri Unused' was shown as below: Starting Ending cyl head sect cyl head sect 3500 0 1 4865 144 63 Of these, the number I had to enter is one less than the 'Ending cyl' (i.e.) 4864 I did not select 4865 because it is incomplete (the no. of heads is not 254). I was automatically taken to the 'Starting cyl' for the 'Boot Manager' partition. Here I used backspace key to clear the number which was already there and entered 4864. The 'Ending cyl head sect' were automatically filled. I accepted these default values. Then I observed that two new 'Pri Unused' rows were created (one before and another after 'Boot Manager' partition) 12. Keep pressing the left arrow to move past 'Boot Manager'. When a black cursor is displayed between 'Pri' & 'Boot Manager', enter the number 4. This 4 is the MBR row number. (Now that you are familiar with creating 'Boot Manager' partition, you can create other partitions by following a similar procedure (i.e.) steps 9 to 11. But this time, you need to select the appropriate partition type and enter the starting and ending cylinder numbers depending on the size - which is displayed last in the row - you want for the partition . Don't enter any values for head & sect; just accept the default. Also you need to enter an MBR row number within 1 to 3) 13. Press F2 to save the changes. 14. Press Esc to quit. You might/will be prompted to enter an active boot partition: There is no active Partition on this Disk!!! Proceed anyway No. Let me go back. If you already have partitions/created new partitions then select 'No. Let me go back.' and move the upper arrow key to the partition/operating system you want to boot. Enter the letter 'b' (without quotes). You will see an '>' and 1 in this row. Press F2 to save & Esc to quit. If you don't have any partitions, select 'Proceed anyway' Reboot the machine. The installation of RPM is over. You can proceed with the OS installation now (if any). Some operating systems can overwrite the MBR and thus the boot manager. Read the section "Restoring RPM MBR" in readme243.txt on how to reinstall. I read the documentation but I don't want to try out RPM directly on my ======================================================================= harddisk. ========= You have got help! part242sim.exe is what you need. This program creates a file (around 16 MB) and simulates a harddisk on this file. It is as if you are running RPM over this simulated harddisk. Play with it till you gain confidence. I have a 40 GB harddisk. But my BIOS shows only 8 GB. Can I use RPM as I ======================================================================== heard RPM can work around BIOS limitations? =========================================== No. Unfortunately, it does not work this way. RPM needs BIOS for its disk related operations. Recollect that when BM is running, there is no OS loaded in the memory yet. So BM has to rely completely on BIOS for its disk operations. So, I guess the option for you is to upgrade your BIOS (or do some workarounds, if any - please check with your BIOS manufacturer). I have RPM, but my OS does not boot if installed above 8GB? =========================================================== Having RPM alone will NOT make the operating systems boot from above 8GB. The OS should also support booting from above 8 GB. An example of one such OS is NT. NT cannot boot from above 8 GB. See http://www.microsoft.com/technet/treeview/default.asp?url=/TechNet/prodtechnol/winntas/tips/techrep/drive.asp So you need to check first whether the OS can support it before installing the OS above 8 GB. FYI: Windows 95 OSR2 & upwards does not seem to have this problem. How do I save MBR to a file? I get a message that this feature is not ===================================================================== implemented yet. If I follow the suggestion, I get only the partition table =========================================================================== information. ============ You are right. That feature is not there yet. There is a free tool by the name "MBRWork" from http://www.terabyteunlimited.com/utilities.html with which you can backup the first track (of the harddisk) & restore. Please note that this tool does not backup the entire RPM partition table. Read the question carefully. This can only be used for saving MBR. If you want the entire RPM partition table, follow the suggestion given by RPM and get the information printed or saved in a file. My entire disk is assigned to Windows 98 (FAT32 partition). But if I use ======================================================================== RPM, it shows some "Unused" diskspace near the beginning & at the end of the ============================================================================ disk. ===== It is normal. The harddisks normally don't end on cylinder boundaries (so the last cylinder of a disk is not a complete one). Similarly, the 1st side of the harddisk is not used except the MBR. That is why, if you observe thru RPM, you see windows partitions start from 0-1-1 (C-H-S). It is better you leave the "Unused" diskspace unused. AFAIK, most of the operating systems don't use them. I created a new FAT 32 partition in RPM. That partition immediately =================================================================== was highlighted in red (turned red :-)) and I got this message "Bootsector ========================================================================== doesn't have vaild information". ================================ This happens when you create a new FAT partition when "something" was already present in that space. RPM tries to make sense out of the new bootsector and so the error message. Just format the newly created partition. The error goes away in most of the cases. Are there any known "features" that I should be aware of? ========================================================= Remember the quote "It is not a bug. It is a feature"? :-). So here is the list of known bugs: Q. In my laptop, if I enter a large number (beyond the capacity of the disk) for a partition, RPM crashes. It should give an error message. A. Actually, it does give the error message "Partition addresses are out of Range" and it does not crash. We don't know why this happens on the user system. Please see:http://groups.yahoo.com/group/partman/message/961. (may not be considered a bug, but ...) Q. I use RPM. I used Partition Magic to resize my NTFS filesystem. After this, RPM started complaining that "MBR/EMBR partition overlaps an existing partition. Partition not imported" and I see only the old partition. But I want the new partition to be seen by RPM. A. This happens because the newer partition overlaps another partition which is already known to RPM. RPM is not aware that the partition information has changed and so considers that an error. If you enter the correct values for the new partition in the RPM, it will be happy ("something has changed; so let the user change it manually to record the new information"). This feature was included to prevent accidental creation of overlapped partitions. But this can be annoying at times as RPM does not tell you the partition information (start/end etc.) about the new partition (but you want that to be entered into RPM). You need to get it from other means: "Display Partition Information" from http://www.terabyteunlimited.com/utilities.html may be of help here. Q. I set "MBR Executable code" to "Boot Manager" & "Boot interface type" to "Text 25x80" (basically I installed "Text" BM). I created a partition for the BM as prompted. I set my "Default boot choice" to "Partition 2" and saved these inputs. Now, I boot a different OS on a different partition. After finishing with this OS, I reboot the system. Now I expect the BM to boot the OS in partition 2 as it is my default choice. But BM remembers only the OS that it booted last and boots that. Why? A. This is a bug. Sorry about that. Can RPM work with NTFS? ======================= RPM can only create/boot an NTFS partition. No formatting/resizing can be done through RPM. I lost the partition table (therefore the data) of my harddisk. What to do? =========================================================================== Try your luck with one of the following: PC Inspector File recovery: http://www.pcinspector.de/file_recovery/UK/welcome.htm Drive Rescue: http://home.arcor.de/christian_grau/rescue/ (This is shareware now) GPART: http://www.stud.uni-hannover.de/user/76201/gpart/ (This is a linux/freebsd utility) Read all the documentation first. (Just a reminder: You have the "F7 key procedure" also. If it is not possible through that, then you can use Drive Rescue) How do I resize my windows FAT partitions? ========================================== First of all, don't use RPM to resize partitions. It is not recommended. If you want to resize FAT partitions, there are a couple of free utilities: Partition resizer: http://www.zeleps.com Diskman: http://diskman.no-ip.com/ntlworldsite/diskman/index.htm Read all the documentation first. What about resizing of NTFS partitions? ======================================= Good news: There is a free NTFS resize utilitiy available now http://mlf.linux.rulez.org/mlf/ezaz/ntfsresize.html (linux utility) Commercial/shareware Bootit Next Generation: http://www.terabyteunlimited.com Partition Magic: http://www.powerquest.com What about resizing of ext2 (linux) partitions? =============================================== ext2resize: http://ext2resize.sourceforge.net/ Some known partition related information on Microsoft OSes? =========================================================== a. FDISK of Windows 95/98 does not show the correct size if the disk size is above 64 GB. There is a patch available for this. (http://support.microsoft.com/default.aspx?scid=KB;EN-US;Q263044&) b. Windows XP (possibly Windows 2000 too) gives you an option to select filesystem type (FAT32/NTFS) only if the partition/disk (not sure which one) size is less than 32 GB. If the size is > 32GB, it defaults to NTFS. c. Windows 2K/XP cannot format a FAT32 partition if the size is above 32GB. But they can access (read/write) > 32GB FAT32 partition (when they were formatted through other utilities - format32 from the Diskman site is one such utility). Please see the next question also. What are the various BIOS limitations? ====================================== Please see the following links: http://maxtor.custhelp.com/cgi-bin/maxtor.cfg/php/enduser/std_adp.php?p_faqid=344 http://www.maxtor.com/products/DiamondMax/techsupport/Q&A/30004.html The second link gives information on (few) operatings systems related limitations as well. Please see the previous question also if you have not read it already. Can RPM copy my NTFS partitions? ================================ Answers are requested if anyone has used RPM for this purpose. If you don't wish to use RPM/RPM does not work properly, try the following freeware program: DrvImagerXP: http://home.carolina.rr.com/lexunfreeware/DrvImagerXP/DrvImagerXP.htm As usual, don't forget to read the documentations first. My OS (xyz) has its own boot loader. Can I use RPM to boot my OS ================================================================ (e.g.) grub/lilo for linux? =========================== Yes. You can do that provided you don't install the boot loader over MBR (no overwriting of MBR). Please refer to the boot loader's documentation for information on how to do this. In case of Linux, RPM works fine with grub/lilo if grub/lilo is installed on the bootsector of the linux partition. HELP! After installing xyz OS, I don't see many of my partitions anymore (I think ================================================================================= xyz overwrote the MBR)? ======================= So, You did not read the documentation but pused the panic button :-). Read the section "Restoring RPM MBR" in readme243.txt Can I boot Solaris 9? ===================== Yes. You can. But you need to keep the following in mind: 1. Don't use the 'Installation CD'. It is not required. You might have problems if you use this CD. Start with Software CD1. 2.If your software installation/booting fails with ACPI error, follow the instructions at: http://access1.sun.com/FAQSets/Solarisx86FAQs.html (Q12) (I did not get this error) 3. After installing CD1, you need to boot from the harddisk (solaris 9 would have overwritten your MBR – Don't worry about this now; just proceed with the installation). Once it is booted off the disk, after going thru few initializations again, it will prompt you to insert the second CD. Insert CD2 and complete the installation. 4. Now, you can restore the RPM MBR.