[Debian-eeepc-devel] Bug#509765: installation-reports: NTFS is corrupted after resizing on ASUS Eee PC 1000H

Sat Dec 27 23:39:50 UTC 2008

Hi there!

On Thu, 25 Dec 2008 22:55:31 +0100, Luca Capello wrote:
> X-Debbugs-Cc:ing the debian-eeepc-devel mailing list for obvious
> reasons.  Please Cc: me in replies, I am not subscribed to the list.

Still true (but obviously now with a cc:).

> Feel free to duplicate/rename/reassign this bug.  Since I do not own
> this machine, I cannot do further tests, sorry.

Due to unplanned circumstances, I still have the machine, so I performed
more tests :-)

NB, I reordered the quoting parts.

> 1) the NTFS XP partition is now corrupted and need chkdsk
>
>    By default the Eee PC 1000H had Windows XP installed with two
>    partitions: 85GB (the system one) and 65GB.  I reduced the first one
>    to 50GB through the d-i and it worked without any problem (at least
>    d-i did not show me any error).
[...]
>    When I mount the same partition on Debian (stock NTFS support, no
>    NTFS-3G yet), dmesg shows:
>
>      NTFS volume version 3.1.
>      NTFS-fs error (device sda1): load_system_files(): Volume is \
>       dirty.  Mounting read-only.  Run chkdsk and mount in Windows.

I booted on a Windows XP Pro installation CD-Rom (external USB drive),
chose the recovery option and then launched `chkdsk c:`.  Then rebooted
into Debian and indeed mount did not complain anymore:

  NTFS driver 2.1.29 [Flags: R/W MODULE].
  NTFS volume version 3.1.

Unfortunately, the GRUB error is still there:

>  However, if I try to boot on XP through GRUB-Legacy I get the
>  following error (translated from Italian):
>
>      root  (hd0,0)
>       Filesystem type unknown, partition type 0x7
>      savedefault
>      makeactive
>      chainloader +1
>
>      Error reading from disk
>      Press CTRL+ALT+DEL to reboot

It seems the problem comes from Windows XP itself, but TestDisk [1] did
not show any error WRT the NTFS Boot Sector.  Also removing the boot
flags from /dev/sda1 and /dev/sda3 or setting it to /dev/sda1 only did
not solve the problem.

Using XP's fixmbr resulted in an unbootable system: corrupted partition
table, but d-i in rescue mode did not have any problem with it and
`grub-install /dev/sda` fixed at least the boot.  Microsoft `ofdisk
/mbr` failed: obviously there is no more GRUB and thus directly the
error message from XP.  XP's fixboot failed as well: GRUB is still
there, but I have now the correct English translation:

  A disk read error occurred
  Press Ctrl+Alt+Del to restart

Searching for this error on Google revealed that it can be considered a
"common" error caused by unknown factors and still unsolved.  Since it
is sometime a symptom of a broken hard disk, I tested the latter disk
through the HITACHI Drive Fitness Test [2] (version 4.09 Build 00, Apr
10 2007, from Ultimate Boot CD 4.1.0 [3]): the hard disk is healthy,
confirmed by smartd [4] after an extended self-test.

I wanted to check a last time if the problem was the partition table,
but Power Quest Partition Magic 8.0 failed to understand it.

At this point, after two full days of tests, I decided to give up and
start from scratch again: first, I wiped the partition table out with
dd, then I created a big FAT32 partition with Microsoft ofdisk and
formatted it with oformat. After having wiped the partition table out
again with dd, I used the ASUS Recovery CD to re-install XP.  This last
step recreated two NTFS partitions (85GB and 70GB) and the EFI one
(40MB), thus there is no more the hidden FAT32 used for recovery.

Finally the fun began: booting the d-i, as the first time with the
Debian Eee PC image.  This time I chose to differently partition the
hard disk (to be clear, all the steps were done from partman):

--8<---------------cut here---------------start------------->8---
Disk /dev/sda: 160.0 GB, 160041885696 bytes
255 heads, 63 sectors/track, 19457 cylinders
Units = cylinders of 16065 * 512 = 8225280 bytes

   Device Boot      Start         End      Blocks   Id  System
/dev/sda1   *           1        3648    29302528+   7  HPFS/NTFS
/dev/sda2            3649       19452   126945630    5  Extended
/dev/sda3           19453       19457       40162+  ef  EFI (FAT-12/16/32)
/dev/sda5            3649        9727    48829536   83  Linux
/dev/sda6            9728       10092     2931831   82  Linux swap / Solaris
/dev/sda7           10093       19452    75184168+  83  Linux
--8<---------------cut here---------------end--------------->8---

The installation finished and now XP boots without any problem.

I do not really know where the previous problem came from: however,
since I do not have anymore that environment to further debug it, please
feel free to close this bug.

Thx, bye,
Gismo / Luca

Footnotes: 
[1] http://packages.debian.org/testdisk
[2] http://www.hitachigst.com/hdd/support/download.htm
[3] http://www.ultimatebootcd.com/
[4] http://packages.debian.org/smartmontools
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