lost some of my hdd

[wizzle]

hello

i have a 320gb hdd and av lost 20gb of it. am wondering is there a program/way i could find out everything that is on my hdd. see when i installed my new dual boot i noticed i had only 300gb but when i did the first dual boot i had 10gb for swap and 155 each for partition. i was installing windows 7 when i noticed so i clicked on load drivers and then browse and it came up with a hdd partition called boot (x) on it with a file system in it. the browse files lets me access it but i cant delete nothing and cant get the partition to load, sorry if i havent explained it properly i can record what i mean if it is needed really would to get this sorted, i have looked thru some tuts and this is were am at so far but not sure what to make of it. i typed in fdisk -l to try and find out what i had but now i cant make sense of it

root@bt:~# fdisk -l

Disk /dev/sda: 320.0 GB, 320072933376 bytes
255 heads, 63 sectors/track, 38913 cylinders
Units = cylinders of 16065 * 512 = 8225280 bytes

Device Boot Start End Blocks Id System
/dev/sda1 1 12524 100598006 5 Extended think this is my windows
/dev/sda2 12525 13417 7168000 82 Linux swap / Solaris this is my swap
Partition 2 does not end on cylinder boundary.
/dev/sda3 * 13418 38912 204788587+ 7 HPFS/NTFSnot sure what that is
/dev/sda5 1 6446 51773440 b W95 FAT32 this is for space
/dev/sda6 6447 12524 48821503+ 83 Linux not sure what tis is

if any one can help me would be appreciated,

[Snayler]

/dev/sda1 1 12524 100598006 5 Extended think this is my windows

Windows doesn't use Extended file systems. Most likely, your windows is on the NTFS partition.

[macphail]

ok... so what we do know is this:

sda1 is the 'extended' container possibly for one or more of the following partitions
sda2 is your swap partition
sda3 is your Windows partition
sda5 is storage area (FAT32) that you can access from linux or Windows
sda6 is your linux O.S. install partition (which most likely uses sda2 as swap)

to understand what an 'extended' partition really is and how you can use it, take a look at this link:
Partitioning with fdisk
(in particular, read "5.3. Mixed primary and logical partitions" which is about half-way down the page).

Also, take a look at the start and end sectors of each of your partitions and notice which of them (if any) actually reside within the scope of your extended partition...

in general, there are several tools that you can use to understand how your hard drive is being used. for instance, from linux you can simply enter the command 'mount' and you will get a fairly comprehensive list of which partitions (or devices) are currently mounted and where, exactly, they are mounted at. there are plenty of ways to skin this cat, but if i have understood your partitioning scheme correctly, i think you'll already have a good understanding of what is going on at this point.

-- also, while I strongly recommend that you master 'fdisk', if the learning curve is keeping you from being productive and you'd like to get another view at your partitioning scheme...take a look at 'cfdisk'. It will give you (more or less) the same functionality as fdisk but in a slightly more 'user friendly' manner.

good luck with that...

[wizzle]

thank you for the replys, am sorry i havent bin able to reply until now but i havent bin very well so not bin able to use my laptop.