Resolving Error Message "Partition table entries are not in disk order"

The advanced computer users divide their hard drive into various partitions. These can be primary, extended and logical partition. The process of creating various partitions on a hard drive is known as partitioning. While partitioning provides you various benefits, if not performed systematically, it can also result as certain problems.

Data loss is one of the main problems that you might encounter after partitioning your hard drive. In such scenarios, you should firstly try to restore data from the latest backup. However, if you have not created any backup or backup fails during restoration or validation, then you should use advanced Linux Data Recovery tools.

Consider a practical scenario, where you have created two logical partitions (hda3 and hda4) under an extended partition (hda5). The hda4 logical partition contains the data while on hda3, Linux operating system needs to be installed. To install the Linux operating system on hda3, you deleted the existing logical partition for creatig more free space. After the installation process gets over and you attempt to boot the Linux operating system, the below error message gets displayed:

"Partition table entries are not in disk order"

You also view that partition numbers were off and the data saved in the hda4 partition has been deleted. Furthermore, you encounter the same error message each time you attempt to boot your system.

Cause:

The main cause for the above error message is corruption of the partition table. To prevent the occurrence of the above error message, you need to carefully delete the logical partitions. Deleting the logical partitions reorders every partition and causes problems for Bootloaders and etc/fstab mountings.

Resolution:

To resolve the above error and access data, you need to fix the partition table numbering. To do so, you need to follow these steps:

1. To preview the partition table entries, type the below command:

/home/vmunoz # fdisk –l

2. To fix the partition table, login as root and select "f" by typing the following command:

fdisk /dev/hda

3. Finally, before the next reboot, adjust the Bootloader and etc/fstab mount points by using the below command:

/home/vmunoz # fdisk /dev/hda

However, if the above steps fail to perform and you still encounter an error message, you need to reinstall Linux. A clean reinstall of Linux erases all the previously saved files and folders from your hard drive. In such situations, you should use effective Linux Recovery tools. Such Linux Recovery tools incorporate effective scanning algorithms to recover your lost data. These recovery tools provide interactive user interface that makes them easy-to-understand without sound technical knowledge. These tools recover and restore data after issues like superblock corruption, group descriptor faults and inode table damage.

Stellar Phoenix Linux Data Recovery is the most efficient Linux Recovery software. It supports recovery from Ext2, Ext3 and ReiserFS file system based Linux volumes. This read only Data Recovery Linux tool gets installed on Windows (Vista, XP, 2003 and 2000) and the affected Linux drive is connected as slave.