Guest johnfogleman Posted May 25, 2003 Report Share Posted May 25, 2003 I am trying to install Mandrake and I have been all day. I get to the point where I should be partitioning my hard drive. I have two drives a 120GB and a 500MB. I would like to take out part of the 120GB to use for Linux. I select to take space off (5GB?) of my 120 GB and a error message appears that says that I should reboot and run defrag in Windows. I have done this about three times. I also tried to see if it would do the same with the 500MB and it did, there is nothing on that drive. Please help me here. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
MottS Posted May 25, 2003 Report Share Posted May 25, 2003 NTFS or Fat32 the drives? Did you try to parition the drive with Parition Magic before? (just curious) MOttS Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
mtweidmann Posted May 25, 2003 Report Share Posted May 25, 2003 Whats the present layout of your hard drive? Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Guest johnfogleman Posted May 25, 2003 Report Share Posted May 25, 2003 it is a NTFS drive and I did try to use Partitioning Magic Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Guest johnfogleman Posted May 25, 2003 Report Share Posted May 25, 2003 If I go into the Computer Management I have the following drives: 31MB- FAT (healthy EISA Configuration) 110.82 GB - C: NTFS (healthy (system)) 933MB - G: NTFS (healthy) Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
MottS Posted May 25, 2003 Report Share Posted May 25, 2003 The installer can resize NTFS partition no problem but that will DESTROY all the info on it. It can also resize Fat32 partitions without the 'destroying' problem. NTFS is completly closed-source (M$ stuff) so this is why it isn't really well supported yet in Linux. If you can resize one of your NTFS partition with PM then go with it. Leave the free space unpartitionned and the MDK installer should see and use it. Otherwise you can try to resize your Fat32 partition without problem. Did you check the md5sum of your isos before burning them? Good luck! Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Guest johnfogleman Posted May 25, 2003 Report Share Posted May 25, 2003 I have nothing on the G: drive so will 933MB be enough to run Mandrake? What do I need to do to make this work? Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
pmpatrick Posted May 25, 2003 Report Share Posted May 25, 2003 I doubt it unless you really pare down the packages you select and then your not likely to be happy with the result. Can you resize the NTSF partion with Partition Magic? If you can shrink it down to leave about 5GB unallocated that should be more than enough. Then when you do the install just direct that mandrake be installed on the unallocated space. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
bigjohn Posted May 25, 2003 Report Share Posted May 25, 2003 which version of partition magic are you trying to use - because I was given to understand the version 7.0 downwards had difficulty/impossible "doing" drives of more than 80 gig's. But I have got PM8.0 and that should work fine, well it did ok when I installed a western digital 120gig drive. I just instaled window$, followed by PM8.0, the just followed the instructions i.e. how much space I wanted to re-format/partition off, what I wanted to format it as - ext2 is what I selected (don't know if that was correct but !!!) and then just clicked yes to everything else - didn't format any swap space - I got 768 megs of ram. That was when I re-installed mandy 9.0 since then I have been back into window$ and "nicked" another gig of windows space and formatted it as "linux swap" and then installed mandy 9.1 I am presuming that the 9.1 has set itself up to make use of the swap (if necessary) but haven't the faintest idea how to check - but it doesn't really seem to matter. regards john 8) Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Guest johnfogleman Posted May 25, 2003 Report Share Posted May 25, 2003 I am using the trial version of Partition Magic 8.0. What should I do to make this work without lossing any information with Windows? Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
MottS Posted May 25, 2003 Report Share Posted May 25, 2003 PM can resize NTFS partitions without problem. You will not loose your datas using it. I would backup all important datas first though.. we never know :wink: MottS Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Guest johnfogleman Posted May 25, 2003 Report Share Posted May 25, 2003 How do I do that. Ever time I click apply it just goes back to the original state. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
MottS Posted May 25, 2003 Report Share Posted May 25, 2003 Have no idea. Are you sure you can resize partition with the trial version? MOTtS Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Guest johnfogleman Posted May 25, 2003 Report Share Posted May 25, 2003 I dont know. Is there anyother way that I can do this. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
chris:b Posted May 25, 2003 Report Share Posted May 25, 2003 - With the trial version of PM you can't apply the changes - i believe that you don't need PM The defrag of your NTFS partition might be a problem because of two very big system files ( one is a sort of swap, the other a file to store information for the 'sleep-mode'), win can't 'move' them. And if they are at the end of the partition, MDK can't 'cut' some gig of there. It is secure to disable these two things, later you can re-enable it. What I did: disable - restart your computer - do a scandisk - run defrag (look at the details, there you can see where your files are), you might have to do the defrag thing more than one time. Now MDK should be able to resize the ntfs partition. Maybe someone can help me here with the description, how to disable these function - i have a German XP... Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Recommended Posts
Join the conversation
You can post now and register later. If you have an account, sign in now to post with your account.
Note: Your post will require moderator approval before it will be visible.