Arch Linux

mibadt

Member

Registered: 2009-09-25

Posts: 396

Fix NTFS fs type

After installing Arch on an XP PC I can't mount the windows partition (sda1 NTFS).
I'ce checked sda1 and was astonished to find that:

cfdisk reports it to be Linux Swap
yet fdisk reports NTFS.

How can I fix this problem (without formatting sda1)?

Thanks
Michael Badt

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Best regards,
Michael Badt

tomk

Forum Fellow

From: Ireland

Registered: 2004-07-21

Posts: 9,839

Re: Fix NTFS fs type

ntfsfix maybe - it's in the ntfsprogs package.

jargoman

Member

Registered: 2008-03-10

Posts: 33

Re: Fix NTFS fs type

My guess is that it's still an ntfs format and all data is still there but the partition table has it marked as swap. You could try changing the type back to ntsf using fdisk and writing to the partition table but that seems very risky to me. What ever you do do not format it.

I think I had a similar problem before and writing to the partition table didn't delete the data on the partition but still xp would fail to boot thinking it wasn't a valid ntfs partition even though it was.  I ended up mounting the partition with a live cd backing up and reinstalling xp. Of course if you can't mount it. That won't help. I can almost guarantee the data is still there though you just need a tool that will mark it as valid ntfs. It's probably possible to fix it with a hex editor but that's beyond my scope of knowledge.

Try the ntfsfix it might just work.