Pscience5 Forum

bas · Joined: 05 Aug 2005 Posts: 22

Hello,

Some years ago, I partitioned a CF using Martins methode described on www.pscience5.net, which worked great.

Last week, one partition crashed and became invisible for the Psion, no way to get it back.

I tried to partition the CF again, but always the Ranish Partition Manager crashed during the process (I tried several times, also with the 'stable' version).

So I looked for another way, tried many partitionmanagers en USB-bootdrivemakers.
Only this one worked, and is even (much) easier than Martins method:
- download the Gnome Partition Editor - Live CD from http://gparted.sourceforge.net/livecd.php
- burn the iso-file on a CD
- switch off the PC with the GParted-CD in the drive, connect the CF-card reader with the CF in the USB-port and switch on the PC for booting on the CD.
- the Life-CD will run Linux from CD and start GParted, which allows you to create your FAT16 partitions in no time.
IMPORTANT!!! The program standard opens the harddrive of the PC. FIRST SWITCH TO THE CF! You can recognize which drive is set by looking at the memory space.

That's all! Reformat the partitions on your Psion using EDU.

I think (but did not test) this method evens works for PC's that cannot boot from USB, since you boot on CD and since Linux will check the USB-port for you!

All people trying this method: please write your findings here. If everything works fine, it migth be interesting to add this method to Martins article.

Greetz,

Bas[/list]

bas · Joined: 05 Aug 2005 Posts: 22

Good news for users of old computers: the method described above (GParted) works also with computers that cannot boot with a USB device. I tested it today.

Other interesting fact: I made 4 partition on my new 2GB CF card. One partition got corrupted in a very nasty way: no device was able to read it anymore! The Psion didn't detect the partition, GParted refuses to scan the USB device (was hanging itself while scanning), Windows didn't detect the CF. Again, it tool me a lot of searching and testing, but finally I found one, again with free software. I installed CompuApps SwissKnife V3. This app did detect the CF, even noticed it had 4 partitions. It allowed to reformat the CF, with only one partition, but then, GParted was able to detect and format the CF again.