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Wraith2288
05-21-2003, 09:13 PM
I need to partition my harddrive. It has enough free space (10 gigs, i plan on using about 7), i have XP currently running on the whole thing. It's formatted in NTFS, and I plan on running RedHat 9.0. I need to know:
a cheap(free is better... cheap for me is under 40$$ US) partitioning program.
2: will I be able to format the new partition in whatever way Redhat uses?
3: what format does redhat use? I have a USB harddrive, and I assume I can set Redhat up to use that as well (I can partition that one no problem, as I can move the files to my friends computer temporarily...), so should 10 gigs on the main drive be enough? Its a laptop, and I want to be able to unplug the USB HD and still be able to run Linux, just not necessarily have all my files...
other than that, I found a website that tells how to install Redhat 9 on my model of laptop, so I should be set.
homey
05-21-2003, 10:23 PM
If I understand you correctly, you have XP installed on the one and only partition of your drive and formatted as NTFS.
The idea of resizing a partition is not so bad UNLESS it is NTFS :( But not to dispair, there are a couple of options.
1. Probably the most reliable way of doing this without screwing up your XP system is to make a Ghost image of XP and then restore it. During the restore process, you can tell it to use less disk space for the install. That will leave the rest of the drive empty.
2. Partition Magic can resize partitions but I don't have any experience with using that on a production system.
3 Mandrake and ASP Linux have resizing options which work with NTFS ( with a disclaimer ).
I have used that method but, it's abit of monkeying around.
Fryguy8
05-21-2003, 10:36 PM
I personally like partitionmagic. It works real well for FAT/NTFS or whatever.
I recommend converting the partition to FAT so linux can read/write it (NTFS support is still pretty shady)
10gigs is PLENTY for a linux install
dimitrylevin
05-21-2003, 10:49 PM
I've had success using the program on my sig (bootit), but it might work out differently for you
Wraith2288
05-21-2003, 11:03 PM
yeah... I was afraid you guys'd say that. Thinking I'm going to have to save up and buy Partition magic, and sell it on EBAy or something afterwards... damn. I never thought I'd look forward to the day I'm old enough to get a job. (actually, its tommorow... yay birthdays.)
Hey, if you're going to spend some $$ on a partitioning program, why not buy a second hard drive instead? A small drive will be dirt cheap, and by installing Linux on a separate drive you run much less risk of screwing up your XP seup.
:)
Used Mandrake 9.1 it has NTFS partitioning built in. I think the only other distro that has that is Xandros but it's not free.
Wraith2288
05-24-2003, 11:38 PM
sorry, didn't notice there were replies to this topic:
I bought a second harddrive, but it wouldn't let me install on it
Its too late now... I got partition magic, and it worked. Now the problem is that redhat doesn't like my screen (i have a laptop), even though I followed a site from linuxlaptops on "how to install redhat 9.0 on a dell inspiron 8100"... the screen just goes black. Not cool at all.