large harddrive problem

[blue_bozo]

I'm trying to install SuSE 7.2 on a 200GB harddrive. My plan is to get a dual boot system w/ WinXP using the first 190GB and Linux on the last 10GB. But when I try to install linux it detects my harddrive as only 127GB. However, I can still create partitions for swap and /. Then, when it tries to install, it says it can't create the swap partition and it says there's not enough space to copy files to root (/). I've done a similar setup on a 80GB harddrive with Win98 so I'm puzzled why it doesn't work anymore. Is there a way around this or do I need to buy a new distro?

[mdwatts]

Sorry for the delay in replying to your question as I guess the other members did not know the answer and could not provide anything to help.

If your system bios detects the full size of the HD, then I would suspect it has something to do with the older version of SuSE.

See if SuSE has anything on their site on the HD size limitations for version 7.2.

[blue_bozo]

I checked the SuSE site and thy only talk about HD limitations for 8GB and 32GB. I guess the problem is that the thing the installer uses to partition the disk (fdisk?) is old and can't address large harddrives. Does anyone know if a newer version would fix this? Anyone tried installing linux at the end of a large HD?

[mdwatts]

You could use something like

http://www.tux.org/pub/people/kent-robotti/looplinux/rip/

to prepartition your HD before installing SuSE 7.2 and then skip the partitioning step during the installation.