Demon Posted July 3, 2007 Report Share Posted July 3, 2007 (edited) Hi people! Yesterday I was having some problems (look here: https://mandrivausers.org/index.php?showtopic=42585) and now my partitions are all in a mess. Can you help me out to repartitiong it? All advices are welcome! Here we go: I made a 30 MB tiny partition (ext2) for /boot, but theres nothing on it. When I created drake asked me to move the files from boot to it, I clocked on OK, but everything is same and that partition is empty I have a 13GB Windows C partition, which must remain intact, as well as Windows D partition I also have Windows E partition, which contains media (music and video only). I wanted to reformat it to XFS (I found somewhere that FS is best for media), but unfortunately Windows IFS driver which I have installed on my WinXP can't see XFS file system (only ext2 and ext3). And I don't wanna FAT32! The rest of the HDD I wanted to split to / and /home, but I wanted to format /home with Reiser4 FS The last 500MB is for Linux swap Here's what my HDD looks now (if that can help): [moved from Software by spinynorman] Edited July 13, 2007 by Demon Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
tryfan Posted July 3, 2007 Report Share Posted July 3, 2007 As long as you don't touch win_c and win_d you should be safe. Then, I would try deleting win_e (if you're sure you don't need the data on that partition), and the linux partitions. You would then have a rather large continous part of disk that you can split any way you wan't, and with whatever filesystems you want. (I would suggest a larger partition for swap than you have now, though, at least one GB). But if I were you, I would wait for other opinions - there might be better solutions :P Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Demon Posted July 3, 2007 Author Report Share Posted July 3, 2007 The point is that I wont delete anything - I will have to move or resize partitions... Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
tryfan Posted July 3, 2007 Report Share Posted July 3, 2007 I will have to move or resize partitions... Wow. Well, it's way out my league, then :o Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Ixthusdan Posted July 3, 2007 Report Share Posted July 3, 2007 Before you begin, back up your data. Anytime you mess with partitions, the most common result is lost data. It can work, but do not under-estimate the risk. In order to move data, or change a file system, there should be a usable free space. Partitioning tools can do it sometimes, but it is not safe. (back up your data) There is no reason to renumber partitions. If you created one in between other existing partitions, that would have renumbered them. I am not certain the software did anything unusual. I recommend you buy another drive, or buy a 1G flash drive. Then you can move your data and replace it as you need. What does it do when you say, "windows does not boot"? Would you post your /etc/fstab? Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Demon Posted July 3, 2007 Author Report Share Posted July 3, 2007 Thanks, I put my Windows "back on line". :) For now, I have this: 30 MB (is it enough?) ext2 partition for /boot (picture in this post). I don't know wether should I use ext2, ext3 or some other FS. Then folows Windows partition C (13 GB, should I reduce it?), I'll leave it for now (but reinstallation is pending :D ) Windows D partition (21GB, but will be reduced to about 15-18 GB) will also remain as NTFS. Windows E partition - I'll convert (backup files on DVDs, reformat it and put files back) it to... Well, I don't know yet which file system. I thought of XFS, but then I wont be able to access it from Windows. Alternative is ReiserFS (I have some drivers which are allowing Windows to read and write ReiserFS). I'll use it mainly for multimedia (music and video), and I'll resize it to about 22GB. The rest is for the system partition (I plan to leave as it is, ext3, I wont move it, maybe just resize it a bit...) and a /home partition (again, don't know which FS?) And finaly, my swap partition is at the end of the disk (512MB). Any comments? Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
pindakoe Posted July 3, 2007 Report Share Posted July 3, 2007 (edited) I will not repeat the words of warning on risk of dataloss and making backups if you play with partitions. It works well 99 out of 100, but if you are that one case you will curse yourself for not having made backups of the lost data. Keep in mind that NTFS (Windows 2000 and later Windows operating systems) is less known to Linux software than FAT32 etc, so I would say your risk there is somewhat bigger. I have good experiences with GParted for repartitioning, but have never changed NTFS partitions. It is available here. GParted can create/delete/move and resize partitions. The one thing it cannot do is 'translate' from one filesystem to another (i.e. NTFS -> XFS). I am not aware of any software that can do this, but who knows what you'll find with google? One way to accomplish this of course is create a new empty partition with the file-system of your choice, then copy (from within Windows or Linux) all files from your Windows E:-drive to the new partition, then delete the old Windows-E and move the newly created partition into the place previously occupied by windows_e. If you have the liveCD then you can do the copying from the commandline (or possibly with a file-manager). I would not bother with separating out /boot onto a separate partition. This is probably only usefull for special cases. I would split all remaining free space into three partitions for Linux, i.e. /, swap and /home. One rule of thumb for swap is twice the amount of installed RAM, but then again I have also seen people saying that you can do away (mostly) with swap if you have sufficient RAM and do not run too many servers or very RAM-consuming user programs. I run 5-10 servers, do some browsing (multiple tabs), email and occasional wordprocesssing/spreadsheets without seeing more than a few Mb of swap space in use of the 512Mb I have created. I know that religious wars are fought whether ext2/3/4 is better than Reiser, XFS or JFS. My take is that it probably doesnt make much difference for most home-applications. Ext3 seems to have a good balance of performance, support and reliability, so why not use that? Edited July 3, 2007 by pindakoe Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Ixthusdan Posted July 3, 2007 Report Share Posted July 3, 2007 Windows: If you are fussy, make a partition for the os and page file(10G). The page file always needs space in order for Windows to work. People frequently do not know why they have trouble when they still have x space left. They have crowded the page file. Make a second partition for everything else, including the documents folder and programs. (50 or more G) This way you could improve security and also not have the system stop working if you fill the drive. Always use ntfs for these two partitions. Linux: I use ext3 or Reiser. Any journaling file system is best. I do not use varied fs for different partitions. (Why?) Mandriva does not need a /boot. Not many do anymore. I have a /, /home. and /usr. / is 6G. /home is 20G, and /usr is 30G. I use vfat for trading data, although I have not experienced anything bad using ntfs tools for looking at windows. I never look at Linux from windows. With windows, what is not known is always a danger. I use Linux to look at windows. Oh, the swap on my system is 512MB and is never ever used for anything. I have 2G of RAM. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Demon Posted July 3, 2007 Author Report Share Posted July 3, 2007 So /boot partition is not needed? I read somewhere that Linux boots faster if it's boot is on the ext2, but I didn't notice any improvement... For Windows partitions I use Partition Magic - it doesn't make problems as long as I don't touch Linux partitions (I have some bad experiences from the past...). Also, why would I need /usr partition? And, what's the benefit of /tmp partition? Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
pmpatrick Posted July 3, 2007 Report Share Posted July 3, 2007 In a single user, desktop environment there are not a lot of advantages for using a separate /usr, /tmp, /var, etc. In fact for newbies, this usually ends in one partition or another being too small somewhere down the road. Having a separate /home is useful since you can keep all your individual settings when you install an updated version of mandriva by directing the install routine to not format /home. Other than that, there is not any good reason not to have only one / partition with everything on that and one swap partition. For servers, you will frequently want a separate /var and /tmp since these can fill up in a server environment which can cause problems if they are part of the / partition. In a multiuser environment, most admins will have separate /usr, /home, /boot, maybe /tmp and /var as well. This is done for ease of backup, security and other administrative ease reasons. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Demon Posted July 3, 2007 Author Report Share Posted July 3, 2007 Okay, thank you very much, all of you! So I probably don't need /boot partition?! But I'll leave it for now ('cause I don't know how to painlesly move boot to /, :lol: ). I've just had a "kernel panic" again, but successfuly recovered from it. I learned one more thing: don't change label of your partitions unles you know what you are doing! : B) :lol: :D Starting to feel this place like my home... Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
scarecrow Posted July 4, 2007 Report Share Posted July 4, 2007 Reiser 4 is absolute and dangerous crap. DO-NOT-USE-IT, period. Reiser 3.6, ext3 and xfs should all be fine. Personally I would use reiser 3.6 for the root partition, and XFS for the large (>50GB) ones. A separate /boot partition (normally a very small one, say 40MB formatted as ext2) is very useful if you want to boot more than one Linux distributions using just one bootloader- else it is of no particular benefit. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
AussieJohn Posted July 5, 2007 Report Share Posted July 5, 2007 Whats with this /boot partition business ???. Have never heard of it in the past and I have been using linux for quite a few years. Why do some people seem to have to make linux (for me=Mandriva) appear so much more complicated to use than it really is in reality. :wall: Cheers. John. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Demon Posted July 12, 2007 Author Report Share Posted July 12, 2007 Hey guys, my HDD's partition table is totaly screwed up, so Partition Magic, QTparted or Gparted either wont run or not displaying partitions correctly. Have you any advice for me? I have some partition table repair tool for Windows, but I don't trust it... Don't get me wrong, everything is ok, but I can't run any of those partitioning programs. And I need them because I can't move NTFS partition with Mandriva's built-in partition manager. Alternative is to format the partition I want to move, then create it again on desired place... Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Ixthusdan Posted July 13, 2007 Report Share Posted July 13, 2007 Some windows programs (Partition Magic) report bad partitions when they are not bad. How do you mean "bad?" If everything is working, they can't be too bad. A not: the last time I had a hard drive report partition errors, it was going out. Did you back up your data? Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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