Other Distro using isobooter

[peppyy]

I have been playing lately just to check out some other distros. I have a 32gb usb3.0 stick and am using the wonderful isobooter and some smaller distro iso images. Booted to a couple and played with them for a short time then rebooted to my main puppy. No issues with that however when I inserted the usb stick again, there was now a new partition for lubuntu. I found it odd that it would create a new partition with a simple boot without saying something.

usb-booting.jpg (54.43 KiB) Viewed 907 times

I choose "Boot Lubuntu" from the menu and when it had booted it had an install link on the desktop so I didn't think it would have created anything else on the drive. It appears to contain a shortcut to ubuntu so what is this really? It says it is a 1.8gb partition. Did it just create a another partition to reserve space?

[peppyy]

Edit.
It does not show the partition in gparted.

desktop(10).jpg (43.36 KiB) Viewed 905 times

I am guessing that is the 4th partition created by isobooter?

[HerrBert]

The fourth partition is created by isobooter.

From GRUB4DOS_README.txt:

******************************************************************************
*** The PARTNEW Command Syntax ***
******************************************************************************

Besides the mappings in the above section, you may instead choose to create a
new primary partition with the PARTNEW command. PARTNEW can generate a primary
partition entry (in the partition table) for a logical partition.

For example,

partnew (hd0,3) 0x07 (hd0,4)+1

where the file (hd0,4)+1 stands for the whole partition (hd0,4). This command
will create a new primary partition (hd0,3) whose type is 0x07 and whose
contents/data is the same as that of the logical partition (hd0,4).

Just like a whole logical partition, a contiguous partition image file can
also be used with PARTNEW:

partnew (hd0,3) 0x00 (hd0,0)/my_partition.img

The type 0x00 indicates a type-auto-detection of the image MY_PARTITION.IMG.
The above command will create a new primary partition (hd0,3) with a proper
type and with contents/data being exactly that of the contiguous file
(hd0,0)/my_partition.img.

PARTNEW will automatically correct the "hidden sectors" in the BPB and the
modification will be permanent. And PARTNEW modifies the partition table
permanently.

In addition to creating new partition entries, PARTNEW can also be used to
delete(erase, or wipe) a primary partition entry. For example,

partnew (hd0,3) 0 0 0

which will empty the last entry in the partition table in MBR. Generally,
you should use the form of "partnew PARTITION 0 0 0" to erase the entry.
Note that only the entry would be erased, and the data stored in the partition
will not be touched.

[peppyy]

So if I am going to format the drive for something else, how do I remove partition 4? Do I just remove the contents since gparted can't see it?

[Chelsea80]

@peppyy

This might help:

https://hddguru.com/software/HDD-LLF-Lo ... rmat-Tool/

Best regards

Chelsea80

[williams2]

You need to know where the partitions begin and end,
and whether the partitions overlap (they should not overlap.)
You need to know if the partition table is MBR or GPT.

MBR allows up to 4 primary partitions,
or up to 3 primary partitions and 1 extended partition
that can contain many logical partitions.
so you might have sdc1 sdc5 sdc6 etc etc.

What you seem to have are 2 primary partitions sdc1 and sdc4.

What info does fdisk -l print?

[HerrBert]

To just remove the fourth partition you can add an entry to the menu.lst on your USB drive:

Code: Select all

title Remove 4th
partnew (hd0,3) 0 0 0

Then boot from your USB drive and select this entry. There will be no output to console.

Or you boot from your USB drive and type c to get to grub4dos commandline,
run the command partnew (hd0,3) 0 0 0 and then type halt or reboot.

[peppyy]

@williams2
Device Boot Start End Sectors Size Id Type
/dev/sdc4 2107520 5882623 3775104 1.8G 0 Empty

It appears that the trick is to run wipefs --all /dev/sdc before partitioning the drive, just too nervous to try it

Perhaps after coffee.