How to partition for Win98?

[Heinz Kirchmann]

Sorry, but I couldn't find a solution for my problem how to partition a 
harddisk properly for use in Windows98 and Linux. I tried hard to solve 
this problem by myself but I'm running out of ideas now. Maybe you can 
help me, although this is _very_ probable not a bug of parted (I 
interpreted the sentence 'All discussion related to Parted is welcome' 
that my problem is welcome, too :-)

The history: In earlier days I used to partition my harddisks using 
cfdisk. Doing it that way seemed to be a good idea until I once tried to 
 format one of my partitions from Windows98. This caused damage on 
several partitions, even the ones with ext2, so I lost one of my Linux 
systems that way. Now someone told me, that I had to be careful when 
using big disks (> 8.5G): in that case one had to use the extended 
versions for extended partition and windows partitions, he said.

I checked that and found indeed the harddisk (of about 40G) wrongly 
partitioned with partition type 5 for extended and 6 for the windows 
partitions (fat16). Now I recently had a disk crash and now have the 
opportunity to repartition the disk and correct this mistake.

Since I was a little bit disappointed of cfdisk (where the type of the 
extended partition seems to be automatically chosen as of type 5), I 
decided to try parted instead. This worked well in that the extended 
partition is now of type f and windows partitions (all logical) are of 
type c (I decided to use fat32 now instead of fat16). BUT: when I boot 
into my Windows98 system it is showing one more drive than I have 
windows partitions.

This does not increase my confidence into invulnerability for my Linux 
partitions when working with Windows98. First of all I thought the disk 
might be too big for Windows 98 at all, but when I tried with another 
smaller disk (9G) I found the same effects take place (indeed I found 
_two_ more drives than partitions in that case). I tried hard to google 
for more information, but I couldn't find anything relevant up to now.
So I decided to write this mail hoping you might give me a hint how to 
avoid that problem. I'm really desperate, so any advice is welcome (or 
maybe a hint where I can find more information).

I added the partition info of my harddrives (received via
  'parted /dev/xxx print'
using GNU Parted 1.6.3) as attachment. Maybe you can find something 
obviously incorrect in there.

I'm not subscribed to this mailing list, so please send any reply to my 
address, too.

Thanks in advance,
        Heinz

Disk geometry for /dev/sda: 0.000-8715.820 megabytes
Disk label type: msdos
Minor    Start       End     Type      Filesystem  Flags
1          0.031   1427.651  primary   fat16       boot
2       1427.651   1670.822  primary   ext2        
3       1670.823   1913.994  primary               
4       1913.994   7883.459  extended              
5       1914.025   2157.165  logical   linux-swap  
6       2157.196   4063.315  logical   fat16       
7       4063.346   5020.312  logical               
8       5020.343   7883.459  logical   ext2        

                                                                          
Information: Don't forget to update /etc/fstab, if necessary.

Disk geometry for /dev/hda: 0.000-39266.718 megabytes
Disk label type: msdos
Minor    Start       End     Type      Filesystem  Flags
1          0.031    400.056  primary   ext2        
2        400.056    800.112  primary   ext2        
3        800.112   4800.673  primary   ext2        
4       4800.674  39260.412  extended              lba
5       4800.705   7302.985  logical   ext2        
6       7303.017   7797.172  logical   ext2        
7       7797.204   9797.453  logical               lba
8       9797.484  11797.734  logical               lba
9      11797.765  13798.015  logical               lba
10     13798.046  15798.295  logical               lba
11     15798.327  16300.327  logical               
12     16300.358  19296.826  logical               

                                                                          
Information: Don't forget to update /etc/fstab, if necessary.

Disk geometry for /dev/hdc: 0.000-43979.414 megabytes
Disk label type: msdos
Minor    Start       End     Type      Filesystem  Flags
1          0.031    243.171  primary   ext2        boot
2        243.171   1388.430  primary               
3       1388.430   2149.321  primary   ext2        
4       2149.321  41456.799  extended              
5       2149.352   5012.468  logical   ext2        
6       5012.499   5773.359  logical   ext2        
7       5773.390   6016.530  logical   ext2        
8       6016.562   6259.702  logical   ext2        
9       6259.733   8165.852  logical   fat16       
10      8165.883   9122.849  logical   ext2        
11      9122.880  11028.999  logical   ext2        
12     11029.030  13892.146  logical   ext2        
13     13892.177  16276.794  logical   ext2        
14     16276.825  17233.791  logical   ext2        
15     17233.822  18567.312  logical   ext2        
16     18567.343  22379.611  logical   ext2        
17     22379.643  31918.205  logical   ext2        
18     31918.236  41456.799  logical   ext2        

                                                                          
Information: Don't forget to update /etc/fstab, if necessary.