Guest ThePro Posted September 21, 2004 Report Share Posted September 21, 2004 I Have 4 HDs. C: Drive is 40GB and Windows takes 8GB of that. The rest (30GB) is formatted and left unpartitioned and im trying to install Mandrake into it. After accepting the licence i get this error "This harddrive is too corrupted for me", or something like that, and it wants to "Format all partitions". It also says something about HDC and 30GB. Does this mean that it found the unpartitioned space and wants to format that? I Dont have any other partition taking 30GB so it has to be the unpartitioned space? Or is it trying to format some other drives? I Cant be sure and i don't want to lose data on the other drives. Yes I'm a noob, help me! Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
pmpatrick Posted September 21, 2004 Report Share Posted September 21, 2004 You can't format unpartitioned space so your first sentence doesn't make a lot of sense to me. What partitioning tools did you use to create your original partition(s)? I wouldn't let the installer format all partitions if your not sure exactly what it's doing. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Guest ThePro Posted September 21, 2004 Report Share Posted September 21, 2004 Umm, yeah. Maybe it's my bad english. I Used PartitionMagic to "Delete" the space. So now the first hd has 8GB C: (NTFS) and 30GB Unallocated space. Is it possible to take a screenie during the installation? Maybe that would help more. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
arctic Posted September 21, 2004 Report Share Posted September 21, 2004 use partitionmagic to format the unallocated space into e.g. ext2 or ext3 format. if the space is unformatted, thus unallocated, the installer will try to install into the windows-partition, which is also heavily fragmented as far as i can conclude from your information. once the hd-space you want to use for linux is in ext2 or ext3 format, the installer should have no problems installing the new os. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Guest ThePro Posted September 21, 2004 Report Share Posted September 21, 2004 Well, that didn't help at all. Now, Instead of the error screen the install just freezes at the same place. The wait cursor appears and CD stops, I waited about 3 mins but nothing happens. I Used PM to format to Linux Ext2. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
arctic Posted September 21, 2004 Report Share Posted September 21, 2004 uh... i think i just figured out what went wrong... the ntfs partition is causing trouble. so, if you can, do the following setup with partitionmagic: partition 1: your windows partition as it is. after that one, there should be partition 2: linux-swap (size: double number of your total ram, e.g. if you have 256 mbram, make the partition at least 512mb big, if possible). putting the swap between the linux and the windows partition will stop some irritating beahvior of win and/or linux. now add after the swap partition partition 3: size roughly 5gb. here you place your root directory → "/ " later when mandrake installs. for now, leave this space as an ext2 or ext3 partition. you can change it later with mandrake to reiserfs which is imho even better. then allocate the rest of your space to partition 4: where you put all your personal data. this partition will be called "/home" once you run the mandrake installer. make this partition also to ext2 or ext3 with partitionmagic and change it to reiserfs later with mandrake. i hope it will work now.... if not, continue posting. :) Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Guest ThePro Posted September 21, 2004 Report Share Posted September 21, 2004 Didnt help :l I Did exactly as you told but same freezing happens. | Windows | Swap 1GB | Ext2 5Gb | Ext2 RestGB | right? Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
bvc Posted September 21, 2004 Report Share Posted September 21, 2004 do you have boot magic installed? disable it. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Guest ThePro Posted September 22, 2004 Report Share Posted September 22, 2004 Disabling bootmagic doesnt help. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
arctic Posted September 22, 2004 Report Share Posted September 22, 2004 damn... what type of hd's (vendor) do you have? sata-drive? Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Guest ThePro Posted September 22, 2004 Report Share Posted September 22, 2004 Whats vendor? :unsure: Hd's are IDE drives if thats what you mean. The one with Windows is MAXTOR 4K040H2 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Echylo Posted September 22, 2004 Report Share Posted September 22, 2004 Well, in your case, the Vendor is Maxtor(the one who sells your HD) what is your original language, maybe we can translate? Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Guest ThePro Posted September 23, 2004 Report Share Posted September 23, 2004 No more ideas? And btw, I tested the CDs on another system and they work just fine. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
bvc Posted September 23, 2004 Report Share Posted September 23, 2004 (edited) disable btmagic>reboot>reboot (yes, twice)>use pm8 to convert the ntfs to fat>format the other 30gb to fat>reboot>reboot (yes, twice)>install telling diskdrake to use the 30gb fat. Edited September 23, 2004 by bvc Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Guest ThePro Posted September 23, 2004 Report Share Posted September 23, 2004 Converting to FAT didnt help. Then i tried a Gentoo live CD and it outputted this: Invalid loop location /zisofs Please export LOOP with a valid location... /bin/ash: can't access tty: /newroot # I have no idea what that means. Something important? I Also tried installing Mandrake in textmode and it freezed when it tried to "detect harddrives" Tomorrow i will remove all the extra drives and do what I was originally doing. Going with unpartitioned hd. If it really does format everything, is it possible to install Windows after Mandrake? Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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