hello as instructed i did this procedure of trying to convert my hda5 to ntfs but my error message was re-reading the partition table failed with error 16. device or resource busy the kernel still uses old table. the new table will be used at the next reboot. at this point i notice that the partition hda2 was represented as W95 extended (LBA). does this possibly mean that i should have rather tried converting hda2 rather than hda 5. waiting for further advice don <div class="gmail_quote">On Mon, Mar 3, 2008 at 1:44 PM, Nils Kassube <<a href="mailto:kassube@gmx.net" target="_blank">kassube@gmx.net</a>> wrote: <blockquote class="gmail_quote" style="border-left: 1px solid rgb(204, 204, 204); margin: 0pt 0pt 0pt 0.8ex; padding-left: 1ex;"><div>Donny George wrote: > how could i possible convert hda 5 to ntfs </div>OK, I should have explained it earlier. Be careful with this procedure because you could possibly make your entire disk unusable. Open a terminal and type this command: sudo fdisk /dev/hda That will give you a new prompt within the fdisk program. Use the "p" command (without quotes) to display the partition table and verify it is the trouble disk. Use the "t" command. It will ask for a partition number. Enter "5" to select the hda5 partition. Now it asks for the hex code you want to use. Enter "7". Now it tells you that the partition type is changed to HPFS/NTFS. Verify the new type of /dev/hda5 with the "p" command. If there is something wrong, you can still quit the program with the "q" command and start again because until now nothing is written to the disk. Only if it is OK, use the "w" command to write the modified partition table to the disk. Then mount the partition with this command: sudo mount /dev/sda5 /mnt If the command succeeds without error message you can check if there are still data on the partition. If there are data you can find them in the /mnt directory now. <div><div></div><div> Nils -- ubuntu-users mailing list <a href="mailto:ubuntu-users@lists.ubuntu.com" target="_blank">ubuntu-users@lists.ubuntu.com</a> Modify settings or unsubscribe at: <a href="https://lists.ubuntu.com/mailman/listinfo/ubuntu-users" target="_blank">https://lists.ubuntu.com/mailman/listinfo/ubuntu-users</a> </div></div></blockquote></div> -- Donny George Lugostraße 14, Freiburg 79100, Germany. Mob : 0049-1727049650 Tel : 0049-7618706993