Need help with partitioning for Linux install...

[Kyouchou242]

OK, I have a system running on 2 hard drives of 115GB each. Each one is a single partion alone. Each one is NTFS file system. The first one has WindowsXP installed on it as well as a few programs and miscellaneous files. The second one has a LOT of programs installed on it, and a LOT of miscellaneous files. Now, while I CAN back everything up, reformat and repartition everything, and reinstall everything where I want it so that I have partitions to work with for Linux, I don't want to have to do this because it would take a lot more time than I would like. So here's my first question... How can I change the partition size of each of the two existing partitions in order to create unallocated drive space for new partitions for linux without damaging any data already present? I believe programs such as PartitionMagic can do it, but it may be that they can only INCREASE, not decrease partition size. If it is possible, I would like to get a FREE program that could do this for me as I have very little money to spend on this.

My second question is this: What size should my linux partitions be? I'm thinking I want one partition for system files, two for program files (if that's possible... can Linux handle it if you install programs to different directories on different partitions, even maybe on a different partition and/or hard drive than the one that has the system files?), one for the swap, and two for miscellaneous file storage.

Any help would be great, thanks :)

Kyouchou

P.S. I am truly a COMPLETE Linux newbie so don't assume I know anything at all, cause I really don't, but I do learn fast if you can explain it :)

[psi42]

Originally posted by Kyouchou242
OK, I have a system running on 2 hard drives of 115GB each. Each one is a single partion alone. Each one is NTFS file system. The first one has WindowsXP installed on it as well as a few programs and miscellaneous files. The second one has a LOT of programs installed on it, and a LOT of miscellaneous files. Now, while I CAN back everything up, reformat and repartition everything, and reinstall everything where I want it so that I have partitions to work with for Linux, I don't want to have to do this because it would take a lot more time than I would like. So here's my first question... How can I change the partition size of each of the two existing partitions in order to create unallocated drive space for new partitions for linux without damaging any data already present? I believe programs such as PartitionMagic can do it, but it may be that they can only INCREASE, not decrease partition size. If it is possible, I would like to get a FREE program that could do this for me as I have very little money to spend on this.

Yes, I know mandrake 9.1's install can resize NTFS. You can also check out parted, but I don't know if it does NTFS. Note that you should be prepared to lose all data, as resizing a partition is an immensely complex task and sometimes bad things happen. :(


My second question is this: What size should my linux partitions be? I'm thinking I want one partition for system files, two for program files (if that's possible... can Linux handle it if you install programs to different directories on different partitions, even maybe on a different partition and/or hard drive than the one that has the system files?), one for the swap, and two for miscellaneous file storage.


Yes. Linux has this amazing thing called "mount points," that allow you to mount a partition anywhere in the file tree. So if you mount a partition at /home, then everything written to /home will be written to that partition. You can also just mount a "data" partition anywhere, such as /mnt/data.

About the size of your linux partitions. Well if you have a lot of free HD space, you can make them bigger than you need. :)

Your swap partition should be about 150%-200% of your total RAM.

Your root (/) filesystem should be as big as possible
If you make a /home partition, make it as big as possible :)

If you make a /boot partition, make it at least 64 MB, just to be on the safe side. :)

If you want to keep it simple, all you need is a / partition and a swap partition.


Any help would be great, thanks :)

Kyouchou

P.S. I am truly a COMPLETE Linux newbie so don't assume I know anything at all, cause I really don't, but I do learn fast if you can explain it :)

Have fun with linux!


~psi42

[o0zi]

Mandrake 9.1 and the RIP rescue CDROM both do NTFS partition resizes, and they can decrease as well as increase partition size. Parted, unfortunately, can't.

Your swap partition should only be 1.5-2x of your RAM if that still means it's smaller than 512MB. Anything bigger than 512MB is just a waste of hard drive space.

[motub]

Originally posted by o0zi
Your swap partition should only be 1.5-2x of your RAM if that still means it's smaller than 512MB. Anything bigger than 512MB is just a waste of hard drive space.

This is true, but Kyouchou242 should be aware that if installing RH9, you'll will get a warning if you have 512MB of memory and dont then have a 1GB swap partition.

This really surprised me, but I repartitioned and gave a whole gig swap to RH, because, hey, it's RedHat. Who knows, it might really need it. RH is weird enough in other ways....

As for how to resize the NTFS partitions, you have 2 options. You can download the 1st Mandrake CD (unless you want to install Mandrake, in which case get all 3) and "pretend" to install up to the partitioning process, then reset after writing the new partition table.

Alternatively, you can use a Windows program (under Windows, obviously). The most popular is Partition Magic, and I would suggest using that.

I should probably say that I run a Massive Multiboot system with 2 versions of Windows (98 and 2K Pro) and 4 distributions of Linux (Mandrake, RH, Slackware and Debian), which share both Windows and Linux applications and data between them, via 13 partitions on 2 drives.

So every word that follows is based on hard, painful, repeated experience ;) .

I have nothing against Mandrake's tools, but I just feel much safer managing Windows proprietary file format partitions from within Windows, especially NTFS. And just as it seems better to manage Windows filesystems from Windows, it's better to manage Linux filesystems from Linux as much as possible, but that's not always possible.

Partition Magic is a stupendous program, but it does have a couple of quirks. Even though PM claims to be able to format to Linux filesystems, the only one it formats to relialbly is ext2 and that only as logical partitions.

The problem on the Linux end is that most Linux installers will tend to make primary partitions for Linux if you choose automatic partitioning of free space. Windows really doesn't much like that.

Linux can run totally from logical partitions in an extended partition, so that's at least easily solved. Unfortunately, the various partitioning tools the various installers use don't necessarily mark the extended partitions they create in a way that Partition Magic finds acceptable, which often resulted in PM marking partitions or entire drives on my system as 'BAD'. Even though all of the OSes booted fine, this made me very nervous, because no matter how quirky PM might sometimes be, I do trust that if it says there's something wrong with the partition table, then there's something wrong with the partition table.

After a great deal of trial and error, I discovered the "simplest" way to create a partition table that is acceptable to both Windows and Linux is:

Use PM to resize your NTFS drives.

Make an extended partition from the resulting free space. This way PM knows that the extended partition is correctly marked.

Decide how many partitions you want/need for Linux. The minimum is two (root and swap) or 3 if you need to share data between XP and Linux. In that case you will need a FAT32 partition to hold this data. Linux can write to NTFS, but it is very dangerous and usually disabled by default for that reason. You don't much need a special partition for your program files, except in one particular case, which we'll come to later.

Chop the extended partition up in the size slices you want them, and format them as ext2. IIRC you can format the swap as Linux swap if you want, or leave that space unformatted. If you need a FAT32 partition, format one with that fs.

Then, when you start the Linux install, you can just "use existing partitions", and initialize (reformat) them to the filesystem you actually want, such as ext3 or reiserfs. However, some distributions with less modern installs will only initialize certain partitions such as swap, /var and /home, etc, so these are the only partitions that could be reformatted to another fs (any others would remain ext2). On the other hand, the Mandrake installer (as one example of a more modern partitioning tool, Libranet has another, and probably SuSE does as well) will offer to initialize all partitions found, so you can also change the fs of any "extra" partitions you may have made which are not necessarily part of the standard filetree.

Whew! That's the technical how-to.

Now, just how many partitions should you have, and how big should they be, and all that?

Well, let me be the one to break it to you-- you'll have to figure that out yourself, based on how you use the system. Since you're not yet using the system, you're going to have to guess. And once you use the system that you've guesstimated, there's a good chance that you'll find you guessed wrong, and will have to repartition and reinstall, in order to fine-tune the system to reflect your real-world needs.

This is actually normal.

How to make this as painless as possible is to have a FAT32 partition that you use to hold your personal data (documents, downloaded files, etc), and to back up any settings that you have configured (lilo.conf, /etc/fstab, /etc/XF86Config-4, ~/.kdedesktop, Mozilla bookmarks, etc), in the few hours/days it took you to use the basic system and realize that you really should have allocated more space here and less space there.

One example of how this can occur is if you start to play games emulated via Wine, or Windows games that have Linux binaries. Your /home folder (default location for Wine-installed programs) can quickly run out of room if you do a full install of Half-Life, Quake3, Return to Castle Wolfenstein and Neverwinter Nights (NWN takes over 2GB!). But naturally you'll want to preserve your saves, and your mods, and your custom portraits. So you think, "OK, I'll reconfigure Wine to use the FAT32 partition as the fake_d drive, and put the games there." This is a fine idea. Except now your /home folder has 5GB of empty space that you could really use on that FAT32 partition, because there's no longer room for all the MP3s you planned to keep there.

Of course, you might consider just accessing the MP3s from the NTFS drive-- until you remember you won't be able to edit their ID3 tags or rename them anymore (no writing to NTFS).

So, they have to go on the FAT32 partition, where there's no room. And the only way to move that 5GB from /home to the FAT32 partition is to delete the Linux partition and add some of that now-unallocated space to the FAT32 partition.

The size of the FAT32 partition can be increased via Partition Magic with no loss of data. But the Linux partition is gone and has to be recreated, probably by reinstalling the system (which is why we backed up critical configuration files to the FAT32 partition as well).

The point is that anything on the FAT32 partition is "safe" but anything on the Linux partitions may be in harm's way until you're satisfied with the setup.

It helps a lot to have a backup of your current personal data.

Especially be sure to back up files that must be moved to the FAT32 partition in order to be shared between both OSes (since you can't really work with those files if they remain on the NTFS partition). Do this now, before you resize, repartiton or anything.

When you install your Linux system, only put a limited number of the shared files on the shared partition-- just the stuff you need right at the moment. You'll be busy enough learning how to use the system and getting comfortable that you likely won't care that the Great Novel that you haven't worked on in 2 years isn't instantly at your fingertips. If you really need it, fire up the backup CD, load it and save it to the FAT32 partition.

Spend some time getting to know Linux. Read your man pages or how-to's to learn how to use the many tools you've been given. Hang out on forums. Visit Linux news sites and see what's going on in the community. Install some software and get an idea of how many options you have. Try to do a few things and see how they work.

Once you start to get a feel for how you want the system to work for you, look at your partition scheme and see how well it supports what you want.

If you find that a different partition setup would be better for your needs, or that you would rather be using another distribution entirely, don't freak out. By keeping all of your dynamic data on the FAT32 partition (and copying over your current important configuration files before wiping the current install), you have little to fear from completely deleting and recreating any existing Linux partitions, because there's nothing on them that can't be recovered (from the backup or from the FAT32 partition, which is unharmed).

Plus the process of partitioning need no longer be frightening, because no matter how inexperienced with partitioning you might be or how primitive the partitioning tool, you will be able to easily recognize which are the Linux-format partitions and which are the Windows format partitions. Just don't touch the Windows format partitions, and your data will be safe as houses.

This has been a ridiculously long tute. It could have been longer, but I won't get into the miracle of /etc/fstab just yet. So you'll have to learn how to manage files on this shared partition with su for the time being ;). I will provide a teaser though-- it is quite possible and even easy to ensure that the shared partition is owned by the user (rather than root) when mounted, and can even be shared back to a Windows network by the user. Figuring out how is part of your Linux learning experience, so have fun trying till I get my blasted website up :).

Partitioning is very much the foundation of your system, and how to do it just doesn't get the "air time" it deserves.

[Kyouchou242]

OK, first off, THANKS SOOO MUCH for all the information, especially you motub :). And now on to "second"...

OK, I've been reading through a few of the posts concerning what distros are best for what types of users and why and so forth, and I'm starting to wonder if I made the right choice going with RedHat... So here's the deal... I want something easy to install, with a LARGE list of supported hardware (so it's more likely my own hardware will be supported without much ionvolvement on my part initially), that allows me to set up some sort of GUI during installation so that I can use that GUI right away after initial installation, and something that has a LOT of stuff I can play around with later on as far as configuration and program packages and stuff so I can play and learn and break things and learn, and learn to fix things and learn some more :). Basically, I'd rather get to learning the OS BEFORE I have to learn the intricacies of installing and configuring it initially. So then... did I make a mistake with my choice of RedHat? Or will it do well for me? And just a quick note... I use dial-up internet connections now (High-Speed Broadband isn't available in my area *sighs heavily in sadness thinking back to the good old days when he had DSL*) so I really need to not be downloading 5 differnt distrobutions just to try them out. Oh yes, and another quick note or two... I'm broke... and I DO mean BROKE... so I need free stuff... free distorbution ISO's, free software, etc. So 1) please don't suggest to me that I buy any linux distrobutions, and 2) is there a FREE program that will do what PartitionMagic can do that anyone knows of?

Thanks again,
Kyouchou

[mage492]

Okay, here's my 2 cents on #2:

If you're new to Linux, I would strongly recommend either Red Hat or Mandrake. Unless you have VERY unusual hardware, you should have no problem, and it should set everything up fine, for you. The next part varies by opinion:

If you're a beginner: "It's feature-packed!"
If you're an expert: "It's bloated!"

All the programs and features are very useful to a beginner, though, because you can be exposed to a wide variety of stuff. You'll only need to enter a terminal window rarely (unless you want to go more often, of course). Basically, it's a "jack-of-all-trades" distro. It's GOOD in a lot of things, but it's not really GREAT at any of them. By the same tolken, though, it's not really WEAK in anything, either. While you're using it, you'll begin to develop your own opinions about what you do and don't want.

For example, I used to need a graphical interface for everything. Now, I find that I'm feeling more and more comfortable in the command line. Your wants will change in ways that might surprise you. This is a great way to be exposed to a wide variety of stuff.

[l01yuk]

As for broke, check out sites like www.cheeplinux.co.uk. I don't know where you are but there are sites like this everywhere I think.

Having said that, please buy a box copy if you can, these companies could use the money and you will get direct installation support from them too.

[o0zi]

If you want something with a wide range of supported hardware that configures it all for you and lets you straight into the GUI, look at Knoppix. It's a bootable Linux CD, but you can do a hard disk install to leave you with an easy-to-use system.

2) is there a FREE program that will do what PartitionMagic can do that anyone knows of?
Well, there's fdisk, cfdisk and parted if you just want to be able to organize partitions on your hard drive. If you want to resize an NTFS partition (like most Win XP partitions are), then you'll need either the Mandrake install CD, the RIP rescue CDROM or a utility called ntfsresize.

[mdwatts]

Originally posted by o0zi
Then you'll need either the Mandrake install CD, the RIP rescue CDROM or a utility called ntfsresize.

http://www.tux.org/pub/people/kent-robotti/looplinux/rip/ includes the ntfs 'ntfsresize' utility.

[motub]

Kyouchou, you're very welcome. Welcome to the Linux community, where we try to help each other along with whatever we may know.

Now about RedHat-- I've got to tell you, the only reason I even have RH on my Massive Multiboot is so I can help people like yourself who have installed it as the first Linux distro they heard of, and want to try switching.

I have installed a huge number of different distros in the 5 or so months I've been using Linux, and I don't get RH at all. I can't use the thing for more than 10 minutes before I get ticked off that I can't figure anything out and boot to something I can use. I find it very odd that I can understand and configure Slackware better than what is supposed to be the easiest distro out there. So if somebody can tell me what is good about RH (for a home desktop user new to Linux, and not a certified professional) I'd be happy to hear it, really, I would.

For ease of installation and initial use, imo there is no challenger to Mandrake. Yes, it's a bit bloated. Yes, it uses RPM package management, which can really be a PITA sometimes.

But the more I use it (it was my first distro, and I keep it as a failsafe), the more I appreciate it.

The tools are packed with features, and easy to use. The way the distro is designed is also really nice-- it gives you an easy way to do your normal tasks while leaving you plenty of room (and breadcrumbs) to learn "the Linux way" to do those tasks.

One example-- on your very first boot you get a dialog with previews of the various WMs/DEs and may choose which you'd like for your default desktop. It's the most elegant way I've seen to introduce new users to the idea that Linux is about choice, while making this first choice totally stress-free. You may select a particular DE/WM for whatever "ignorant" reason you like ("ignorant" because you don't know about DE's, don't know how they're different, and don't know what suits you best), but now you know that you have a choice if you want to change your mind later, and you know what your options are.

Basically, the more you learn about Linux, the more functionality you discover built into Mandrake. This distro allows you to add mount options to /etc/fstab using Disk Drake during the initial OS install, if you already know enough to know which options you need/want. It's incredible.

The easy installation (MDK is commonly considered to have the easiest install, barring Lindows) and excellent hardware detection is nothing to sneeze at either. I really can't recommend it highly enough-- even though it's not actually my favorite distro.

[eskimo]

Kyouchou242: Check the hardware/trading section of this forum. If you have no luck there, I have a three disk set for RH7.2, a little outdated but what the heck, you can have it for free. PM me and we'll see what we can work out, you'll need to be in the USA for me snail mail it to ya. Eskimo...:D

[Kyouchou242]

OK first, someone mentioned that if I were to install Mandrake that I should get all 3 discs, but on LinuxISO.org the third disc is listed as "Internationalizations"... I really only need English (for now anyway) so is there really any point to getting the third disc?

Second question... I've discovered that one of my programs won't work properly in WinXP, even with compatability mode on so I want to run a three OS multi-boot system running WinXP (for most stuff), Win98SE (for that one program that doesn't work otherwise and nothing else... yes, that program is that important to me), and Linux (to learn it)... So my question is this: is there a particular order in which those should be installed?

Also just so you know, at this point I've resigned myself to simply formatting and repartitioning my hard drives entirely rather than resizing I think... the only thing that might make me consider resizing again is if I don't need to install Win98 before WinXP but I think I do have to install it first so that XP can overwrite the Boot Manager... then again maybe that wouldn't matter either if the Linux boot manager is installed last and used for all of them or something... ok now I'm confusing myself so I guess it's time to do some more research on the way the boot managers work :). Anyway, any more help you all can offer would be appreciated once again :)

Kyouchou

[o0zi]

It turns out that Mandrake CD 3 contains not just Internationalization stuff, but the kernel source and tons of other useful packages. Frankly, you need it.

I think you should install it: Win98, XP and then Linux. Hopefully that should work, otherwise install XP, then 98 and then Linux.
Really, install them in any order, it's just a bit more difficult if you install Linux first.

[motub]

No o0zi, those three OSes "must" be installed in this order--

Win 98
Win XP
Linux

The reason for this is basically bootloaders.

Windows will always erase any bootloader that exists. So if you install Linux first, any install of Windows will remove your ability to boot into Linux (except via CD-ROM or floppy).

Having said that Windows must be first, the oldest version of Windows should always be installed before the newest.

Windows 98 is the oldest. If you install that first, then install Windows XP, the XP bootloader will find Windows 98 and the XP bootloader will set up a dual-boot between the two Windows OSes, giving you a menu to choose between XP and 98.

If you then install Linux, the Linux bootloader will find a Windows bootloader when it tries to install, and will set up a dual boot between Windows and Linux.

If you choose Linux on the resulting menu, you boot Linux; if you choose Windows, you get the NT bootloader that allows you to choose between 98 and XP.

Yes, you can do it in another order, but trust me, you don't want to have to clean up the mess you'll wind up with when you're just starting out.

[Kyouchou242]

Originally posted by motub
No o0zi, those three OSes "must" be installed in this order--

Win 98
Win XP
Linux

The reason for this is basically bootloaders.

Windows will always erase any bootloader that exists. So if you install Linux first, any install of Windows will remove your ability to boot into Linux (except via CD-ROM or floppy).

Having said that Windows must be first, the oldest version of Windows should always be installed before the newest.

Windows 98 is the oldest. If you install that first, then install Windows XP, the XP bootloader will find Windows 98 and the XP bootloader will set up a dual-boot between the two Windows OSes, giving you a menu to choose between XP and 98.

If you then install Linux, the Linux bootloader will find a Windows bootloader when it tries to install, and will set up a dual boot between Windows and Linux.

If you choose Linux on the resulting menu, you boot Linux; if you choose Windows, you get the NT bootloader that allows you to choose between 98 and XP.

Yes, you can do it in another order, but trust me, you don't want to have to clean up the mess you'll wind up with when you're just starting out.


Yeah, that's kind of what I thought, I was mostly just looking for confirmation... OK, so I need to make backups of all my data, reformat, repartition my drives, install Win98SE, install WinXP Home (don't have pro), get the third Mandrake disc, install Mandrake, and then rebuild program installs for Win98SE and WinXP from there and I'm assuming I can actually do the program installs anytime after the OS they are to be installed to is loaded.

Thanks greatly much everyone you've been awseome :)

Just one more question... Will it matter at all which OS I install to which partition (I'm putting them all on the primary hard drive)... I mean, if I wanted to, could I load Win98 into partition 2 and WinXP into partition 1 and Linux into partition 3? Just wondering.

Thanks again :)

Kyouchou

[motub]

Win98 is not going to let you install it to anything but partition 1. WinXP will be happy to be on partition 2 or 3, but it will secretly put its boot files on partition 1. This is why people become unable to boot 2k or XP if they decide to reformat a no-longer-wanted 98 partition-- they've unknowingly also deleted the NT boot files.

Linux can go anywhere that's left, it's pretty flexible, in more ways than one ;).

[Kyouchou242]

OK thanks :) I'll let you all know how it goes when I'm there (I'll probably end up asking more questions anyway *smiles*).

Kyouchou

[Kyouchou242]

OK, next question/issue/problem... whatever...

OK I've been taking a lot of time backing up all my old data and making sure I have everything I need to do this whole triple-boot system install thang (largely cause I've been busy with other things too). Anyway, I got to the point where I was trying to decide how best to handle the partitioning/formatting of my hard drives after I'm finished with doing my backups. So I was thinking it might be easiest to boot to Knoppix off of the knoppix bootable OS disc so that I could use QTParted to handle all of that (delete existing paritions, repartition the hard drives, format the partitions to various file systems) because I reason that if the OS is running off the CD then it doesn't need the hard drives to run so I can delete them without making it imposible to continue to use the program (that makes sense, doesn't it?). So I decided to try and familiarize myself with QTParted's interface before I actually do anything, but when I loaded Knoppix and ran QTParted I got an error saying "No Device Found! You may not be logged in as the Root user". OK, so when I load Knoppix I load it with the following boot command:

knoppix lang=us desktop=kde screen=1152x864 wheelmouse

This puts me into Knoppix with KDE running at 1152x864 desktop screen resolution with my wheelmouse activated. It also loads it as "knoppix" for the user, not root.

Now, I know the hard drives are recognized and mounted cause I can browse their contents within KDE. So I assume that "knoppix" is not a root level user.

Here's my question then... How do I get QTParted to recognize the drives so that I can wipe them and re-partition/re-format? Is there a way I can log into Knoppix with root level access even though it's booting from the cd-rom? Is there anything else I can do to get it to work properly?

Otherwise I think I'm going to have to load Mandrake through to HDD partiotning/formatting then stop the install process and load Win98, then XP then start Mandrake install again and I really don't want to do that cause I'd like to see the tools I'll be using before I use them if I can... just makes it easier.

Thanks again everyone :)

Kyouchou

[mssever]

You must be root to modify the partition table, and Knoppix tries to make it difficult to become root. You should check out Adios (http://dc.qut.edu.au/adios/). It's the same idea as Knoppix except it has more sysadmin features. You should be able to do what you need with it.

[Kyouchou242]

OK, while I appreciate the suggestion, there's no way in hell I'm going to get ANOTHER Linux distrobution. I have SuSE Evaluation, RH9, Mandrake 9.1, and Knoppix 3.2 already, and please let me remind you all that I have dial-up, not high-speed-broadband.

Now, having that said, either someone here can tell me how to use QTParted on Knoppix, or I'll simply use the Mandrake installer to do the job for me, I just would RATHER use QTParted. So while I appreciate the willingness to make other suggesstions... unless it's a REALLY good one I'm not going to bother.

Please don't take any offense to my saying this, it's just that I don't see much point in you wasting your time telling me something I'm not going to make use of anyway. On the other hand, someone else might make use of it and it's possible that at some point in the future I could make use of it too, so maybe it isn't a waste of time, but I think that's something for you to decide for yourself :).

Kyouchou

[o0zi]

Quoting the FAQs on www.knoppix.net:

There is none; all passwords are locked by default. You can set it by going Knoppix Menu->Root Shell and typing "passwd", then enterting a root password, also there are several sections you can read dealing with this subject in KNOPPIX/README_Security.txt. You can also type "sudo su" or "sudo -s" in any console window, or use <ctr>-<alt>-F2 to get at the text console with already opened root shell.

There you go:)

[Kyouchou242]

OK I got it to work! Thanks so much for the info from knoppix :)

I actually had tried to find info on the knoppix site and the site said it was closed... I mean the whole project, BUT, I was using www.knoppix.net instead of www.knoppix.net: and it's just amazing how much of a diference that little colon makes :) I also looked up some more info on qtparted on their forums there and I'm happy now :)

Oh, and for the record... it's REALLY easy to get QTParted to work once you know how to do it... Launch knoppix with the "knoppix" user and launch your desktop manager (e.g. KDE)... Launch a terminal window (I used Konsole within KDE but it really shouldn't matter as long as it's a terminal window) and at the knoppix user prompt type "sudo qtparted" (without the quotes) and press enter and BOOM your computer explodes! Er... uhm... that wasn't it... oh yes I remember now, qtparted starts up without a hitch and finds your drives! :)

Thanks again :)

Kyouchou