partitioning challenge

I was half tempted today at work to have
an intern install Ubuntu at least twice
on a 10GB drive. According to your predicament,
it should not be able to be installed 3 times
as Ubuntu would have gobbled up too much of it.

We're finishing up the last of our PIIIs--
mostly Dell GX110s from 10 or so years ago
that have 6.4 and 10.2GB drives. Amazingly,
with 256MB RAM, Debian will run decently on
them provided we use good optical drives to
do the installs. An interesting aside is
that in general it's not hard to end up with
what I call a "pre-corrupted" Linux install
due to the use of a mediocre optical drive
and/or a mediocre CD. That never happens
with Windows, but I've seen it many times
with Linux. In any case, Debian and Ubuntu
are similar. With that in mind, my own
experience with redoing pre-corrupted
installs, sometimes twice on the same small
hard drive, and redoing client systems where
they messed it up themselves, tells me your
predicament is a fluke and that I'd be wasting
my time trying to reproduce it.

I have one final suggestion: Download the
net-install version of Debian (it's under 200MB),
burn it to a disk and see what it says about
your drive. Where I work we constantly have to
redo Linux installs and the drive space always
comes back when the partitions are deleted.
In other words, your situation, assuming it's
real, is unique. In the end you may want to
see if Western Digital has any magic words or
techniques that can help you.
--
Sean Cleary wrote:
> On Sep 20, 9:43 pm, Bill Eitner <kd6...@yahoo.com> wrote:
>> Sean Cleary wrote:
>
>
> I have thought of another way to present this problem.
> One that might convince you.
> I can provide screen shots, but that takes up bandwidth. I have fios,
> but your millage may vary.
> My city is Chino, CA.
>
> Ok, lets start loading ubuntu. Eventually it gets to the partitioner.
> The partitioner says something like, 'do you want to use the whole
> drive'`. It shows 80G
> But it will not allow me to use more than about 75G.
> This is using the same measuring tool, akin to using the same
> yardstick.
>
> Also Bios said that the drive was a WDC WD800BB-750KAO
> Taking the core WD800BB I find a link that does this:
> http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produc...82E16822144102
> It is an 80G drive. And this is a mystery, a harder problem than you
> might initially suspect.
>
> I had a similar problem with some of the utils on Ultimate Boot 2007,
> they would show but not delete the
> extra partitions.
>
> Sean

Bill Eitner

On Mon, 21 Sep 2009 20:49:18 -0700, Bill Eitner
<> wrote:

> I was half tempted today at work to have
> an intern install Ubuntu at least twice
> on a 10GB drive. According to your predicament,
> it should not be able to be installed 3 times
> as Ubuntu would have gobbled up too much of it.

Maybe there's a snag there

I wouldn't at all be surprised if Ubuntu turns out te be smart
enough to share a single swap partition amongst 3 different
installations. That would totally mess up your assumption

--
Kind regards,
Gerard Bok

Gerard Bok

On Sep 22, 1:02*am, bok...@zonnet.nl (Gerard Bok) wrote:
> On Mon, 21 Sep 2009 20:49:18 -0700, Bill Eitner
>
> <kd6...@yahoo.com> wrote:
> > * *I was half tempted today at work to have
> > * *an intern install Ubuntu at least twice
> > * *on a 10GB drive. *According to your predicament,
> > * *it should not be able to be installed 3 times
> > * *as Ubuntu would have gobbled up too much of it.
>
> Maybe there's a snag there
>
> I wouldn't at all be surprised if Ubuntu turns out te be smart
> enough to share a single swap partition amongst 3 different
> installations. That would totally mess up your assumption
It did not.
sean

>
> --
> Kind regards,
> Gerard Bok

I really do not think this problem is common. I suspect that things
got much more garbled, and messed up,
that more than one installation was involved, and maybe the partition
tool might have been interrupted once.
I did assume that I could back out of any mess this chaos created
easily, and am wrong.
I can see the partitions using some tools. As I said, the tools will
not delete them. Which lead me to wonder what does define the size of
a disk for a tool.
I also must own up to not yet trying the good suggestion given me, I
will soon.
Thanks,
Sean

Sean Cleary

MF wrote:
> "Sean Cleary" <> wrote in message
> news:5cd4419d-2839-4622-9e09-...
> On Sep 22, 1:02 am, bok...@zonnet.nl (Gerard Bok) wrote:
>> On Mon, 21 Sep 2009 20:49:18 -0700, Bill Eitner
>>
>> <kd6...@yahoo.com> wrote:
>>> I was half tempted today at work to have an intern install Ubuntu
>>> at least twice on a 10GB drive. According to your predicament, it
>>> should not be able to be installed 3 times as Ubuntu would have
>>> gobbled up too much of it.
>> Maybe there's a snag there
>>
>> I wouldn't at all be surprised if Ubuntu turns out te be smart
>> enough to share a single swap partition amongst 3 different
>> installations. That would totally mess up your assumption
> It did not. sean
>
>> -- Kind regards, Gerard Bok
>
> I really do not think this problem is common. I suspect that things
> got much more garbled, and messed up, that more than one installation
> was involved, and maybe the partition tool might have been
> interrupted once. I did assume that I could back out of any mess this
> chaos created easily, and am wrong. I can see the partitions using
> some tools. As I said, the tools will not delete them. Which lead me
> to wonder what does define the size of a disk for a tool. I also must
> own up to not yet trying the good suggestion given me, I will soon.
> Thanks, Sean
>
> Sean, the drive you reference in your link
> (http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produc...82E16822144102 ) is
> a 75 gig drive. Here's how to tell. On a windows machine open
> Calculator. On the menu, click view, then click scientific. Then
> again, one more time, and put a check mark next to "digit grouping."
> Now type 80 billion into the text entry box. Divide that
> 80,000,000,000 by 1024 until you arrive at a two digit number
> followed by a decimal point. That's the size of the drive in
> gigabytes, the way gigabytes are calculated by everyone but drive
> manufacturers.

I did that and got 74.5058...
I don't understand how that is accurate.

A gigabyte is a byte times 10 to the 9th.
A gibibyte is a byte times 2 to the 30th.

How does what you had us do relate to either
of these?

You had us divide 80 billion by 1024 to the third.

So you're saying what we have here is a
74.5058 Gibibyte drive and the BIOS misreports it?

Explain. I'd like to learn as the differences
between decimal and binary math have always
fascinated me.
--

Bill Eitner

On Tue, 22 Sep 2009 11:02:32 -0700 (PDT), Sean Cleary
<> wrote:

>On Sep 22, 1:02=A0am, bok...@zonnet.nl (Gerard Bok) wrote:
>> On Mon, 21 Sep 2009 20:49:18 -0700, Bill Eitner

>I really do not think this problem is common. I suspect that things
>got much more garbled, and messed up,
>that more than one installation was involved, and maybe the partition
>tool might have been interrupted once.
>I did assume that I could back out of any mess this chaos created
>easily, and am wrong.

Well, there certainly is a way to get the drive back into
'virginal state'. Dban will do that for you.

As to your question: 'what defines a disk's size ?': there are
commands a controller can issue to a disk, asking it about size
and related matters.
(Sometimes a disk can sort of lie about it's size. Tools like
dban will catch this also and issue an error message.)

--
met vriendelijke groet,
Gerard Bok

Gerard Bok