Help on Partitioning

[musicfiend3]

I was wondering if someone could help me out with partitioning. I have a 60 gig hard drive. I want 10 for windows and then i want the rest for linux with like 40 as my swap (which i want to be able to use for both windows and redhat 7.3)..if thats possible. The problem is, is that I need a step by step walk through on partitioning it. If someone can tell me how through fdisk that would be great. Im just haveing problems because when i try and partition (i used data lifeguard for my WD hdd) and i try and install linux, it says taht hda is inconsistant, then i get an error in the second disk and it stops the installation. If anyone understands my rambling please help me out!

Paul:confused:

[Daedra]

Ok first you dont need that much swap space, I also have a 60 gig hardrive partitioned like so

40 gig for windows
20 gig for linux
128mb of swap space

if you have one harddrive then you will need tyo install windows frist then boot your linux cd and use the fdisk command like so,

fdisk /dev/hda

there are many good guides for partitioning out there, especially at the linux distributions website, but this should get you started

[askrieger]

Two comments:

First, your linux swap file should be no more (and probably less) than twice the size of your RAM. Your windows swap file is probably larger than that and moreover, it's size is under the control of the operating system and varies in real time. In addition, linux swap files usually go in a small, specially formatted linux swap partition. I don't know if it's possible to use a common swap file, but I suspect that, if it is, it's a bad idea.

Second: The easy way to prepare a disk for linux is to get Partition Magic, and then follow their step by step instructions. There's even a video on the powerquest web site. If your leisure time is worth at least a dollar an hour, you will come close to breaking even by using PM.:)

[slapNUT]

I can't walk you through it cause I'm on a windows machine but it's not that hard using fdisk. NOTE: I don't have all the fdisk commands memorized so double check before doing anything.

First Windows doesn't use a swap partition it uses a swap file so you can't share that.

second I'll assume you have a clean hard drive and are starting from there.

fdisk /dev/hda
p
#this prints out the drive summary telling you about the partitions and so forth. Now if the drive is partitioned as one big partition then you must delete partition #1 and then start adding. This will destroy any info already on the drive so do this only if you are sure.
First you can type m and get a listing of available commands. The ones you need to know are delete, add, toggle bootable, and change.
So to delete partition I think you select
d d=delete
p p=primary
1 1=partition 1
Now add the windows partition
n n=new partition
p p=primary
1 1=partition 1
<enter> <enter>=Keep default starting block
+10000M Makes a 10G partition
c c=change partition type
1 1=change partition 1
l l=list partition types
xx xx=the partition type from the table for vfat
Now make a linux partition
n
p
2
<enter>
+50000M Create a 50G linux partition
I would suggest making windows bigger because if you need storage space in linux you can always use the vfat partition however windows cannot access linux partition so if you run out in windows you're screwed.
c
2 2=change partition 2
l
xx xx=the partition type for linux

Now there should be some space left for the swap partition so make a logical drive on an extended partition.
n
e e=extended
3 3=partition 3
<enter>
<enter> make the rest of the drive an extended partition.
n
l l=logical
5 5=logical partition 5
<enter>
+200M make a 200M swap partition or whatever you need.
c
5 change partition 5
l
xx xx=the partition for linux swap

[rustskull]

If you're going to be using a utility manually, cfdisk is much friendlier than fdisk. It gives a nice small menu that you can use your arrow keys on and just hit enter. It also shows you all the partitions at once and what they are.

Just make sure that if you have more than one disk that you're invoking it with reference to the drive...
Like:
cfdisk /dev/hda
or
cfdisk /dev/hdb
and so forth.

If only one drive, don't worry about it, just type cfdisk.

-rust