The dreaded newbie...

[Guest Lora]

OK...this is my first go at using Linux. I'm a computer geek, and have been getting more and more into the open source scene, but I just got around to investigating and deciding on a Linux distro. I went with Mandriva because it looked simple and newbie-friendly.

 

I've been using Windows XP Home for the last few years, Me and 98, and 95 before that, so I'm a fairly died-in-the-wool Windows user. I've gradually switched to Firefox and OpenOffice, and decided it was time for a change, so here I am.

 

I have the three-disc version of Mandriva 2005 LE, which I bought from one of the low-price Linux CD vendors. I couldn't justify paying 40 euros through the Mandriva site for something I wasn't totally sold on.

 

My system is an HP Pavilion zx5000 notebook, 40 GB (25.9 GB free), 512 MB RAM, Pentium 4, 3 GHz. I plan to keep my Windows installation available, but use Mandrake as my primary OS.

 

OK, now to my problem. I've tried booting from the CD, using the DrakX tool to install. I get through the languages, user agreement, and the security level section just fine, but when I get to the partition part I run into the following problem.

 

I choose the option to create a partition using the free Windows disk space (whatever it says) and it starts a process called ntfsresize, which apparently fails. I get the following message:

Partitioning failed: ntfsresize failed:

ntfsresize v1.94

NTFS volume version: 3.1

Cluster size: 4096 bytes

...a whole bunch of percentages...

Accounting clusters...

Cluster accounting failed.

I prefer to let the program work the partitions out for me, as I'm a total newbie when it comes to OS. I'm a computer geek, but really more of an internet geek. I'm a total newb at command lines, programming, and such. I'll admit I really don't even know what NTFS and FAT3 are, much less how to fiddle with them.

 

Also, what is swap?

 

*hides in newbie hole*

Edited May 10, 2005 by Lora

[tyme]

NTFS and FAT32 are file systems - basically how files are put on a drive and kept track of, and added features like security etc. depending on the file system.

 

You're problem is in resizing of the NTFS partition, apparently there's some problems with making sure everything is where it belongs. I would suggest booting into Windows XP and running your disk defragmentation program a good 2+ times (until it won't defragment anymore) before trying to install, specifically because if the drive is badly fragmented pieces of files are all over the place and can cause problems resizing the partition.

 

If you need me to better explain all that just let me know. If after defragmenting you continue to have a problem, we'll look into other options such as resizing the partition in a different manner.

 

oh - and welcome to the board.

Edited May 10, 2005 by tymark

[solarian]

NTFS and FAT32 are filesystems, in linux you'll most probably use EXT3

Go to custom disk partitioning, there select the empty space, make three partitions. One / the 2nd [/home], third -> SWAP

/ is called root, all your programs will go there. 5gb should be enough (I have 7gb). /home is your user partition, there all your MYDocuments, MYMusic, etc will go.

SWAP (make it 2x your RAM ammount, but not more than 1gb).

After you have made these 3 partitions, proceed,

 

Some time after that in LILO configuration select "first sector MBR" , so you can boot Windows and Linux.

[Guest szaka]

Hello! I wrote ntfsresize and basically the problem is that DiskDrake doesn't show the full ntfsresize diagnostic message so the output is not very helpful, which should have been the following:

Cluster accounting failed ....

Apparently you have a corrupted NTFS. Please run the filesystem checker

on Windows by invoking chkdsk /f. Don't forget the /f (force) parameter,

it's important! You probably also need to reboot Windows to take effect.

Then you can try ntfsresize again. No modification was made to your NTFS.

The ntfsresize FAQ at http://linux-ntfs.sourceforge.net/info/ntf...ize.html#chkdsk has more details:

 

Before resizing an NTFS, ntfsresize makes a filesystem consistency check and it refuses to progress, giving the above messages, if it found errors. In these cases you need to boot Windows and run chkdsk  with the /f (fix errors) command line option. If chkdsk asks you about if it should check the drive the next time you restart the computer then answer 'y' (yes) and restart Windows. If you don't specify the /f option then chkdsk will not fix the NTFS consistency problems.

 

To tyme:

Ntfsresize does NOT require the user to defragment NTFS and fragmented NTFS can not cause problem because ntfsresize versions released since 2004 are able to relocate any data safely. Windows corrupted NTFS and ntfsresize refuses to touch it until the user fixes it by running chkdsk /f. Defrag doesn't help, no matter how many times it's run because it silently ignores the filesystem inconsistency.

 

I hope these understandably explain things.

[Steve Scrimpshire]

Can ntfsresize safely resize ntfs even with that pesky unmovable swapfile that Windows puts on there or should you boot into windows and disable it first?

[Guest szaka]

Can ntfsresize safely resize ntfs even with that pesky unmovable swapfile that Windows puts on there or should you boot into windows and disable it first?

Of course it can! I implemented safe block relocation for ANY files (even swap, hibernation, metadata, MFT, whatever) at the end of 2003 and we made the first officially stable release in March of 2004. Since then almost all distributions changed to this significantly improved version, however almost none of them updated their documentation that no need to defragment, turning off paging, hibernation, recovery files and the other unneeded and quite often useless, only time wasting tips.

 

More info is at http://linux-ntfs.sourceforge.net/info/ntf...html#fragmented

Edited May 26, 2005 by szaka

[tyme]

szaka: my mistake! I haven't resized NTFS or FAT32 since years back (2000, 2001?) and was just going on what i remember to be the "safe' way to do things.