[wplug] Disk Partition Help

[Jonathan S. Billings]

On Sunday, July 14, 2002, at 09:30  AM, R. Lance Martin wrote:

> Hi,
>
> I am installing Red Hat Linux on a Dell Dimension running Windows 2000 
> pro. My C: and D: drives are essentially full, but my E: drive has 
> about 15 GB of disk space. I intend to install Linux on this drive.
>
> I am using the Red Hat disks that come with the O-Reilly "Learning Red 
> Hat Linux" book. I am choosing a maual
> parition strategy (with disk druid), but when I attempt to create my 
> partitons in the paritions window, I run into problems:
> 	In the disk setup, /dev/hda2 seems to be broken up into /hda5 and 
> /hda6 (16000 and 37000 MB respectivly). Unlike the example given in the 
> guide, however, both of these drives are listed as Type NTFS/HPTS 
> rather than "Free Space". When I try to create a new  partition, I 
> enter the proper values (Mount Point, Filesystem Type, etc.) but I get 
> an error "could not allocate the partitons as primary partitons"

What you are seeing is this:  The first, boot partition (C:) is 
/dev/hda1.  The second partition on the disk is /dev/hda2, an extended 
partition, which extends to the end of the disk.  On the extended 
partition, you have to logical partitions, /dev/hda5 (D:) and /dev/hda6 
(E:).  Both are NTFS partitions.  You have no free space, because the 
current partition map has partitions extending across teh entire disk.

> Questions:
> 1.Do I need to use a utility, such as fdisk, to partiton the E: drive 
> prior to the Partiton window in the installation? (i.e. Do I need to 
> create a chunk of free space on the drive before creating the mount 
> points in the intallation?) How can I do this easily with Win 2000 - 
> fdisk is not an option in the 2000 OS and I do not want to purchase 
> Partiton Majic?

If you want more free space, you are going to either have to delete a 
partition, or use Partition Magic to resize a partition.  Had you chosen 
to format one of the partitions as Win32, you could use GNU/parted 
(http://www.gnu.org/software/parted/), but it can't resize NTFS.

I do this kind of thing all the time at work, and I use Partition 
magic.  There really is no other product out there for doing this kind 
of thing for NTFS partitions.  And PM doesn't even work on WinXP 
partitions, because MS has changed the way the world works *AGAIN*.

> 2. If the type is not "Free Space," is one unable to create the 
> partition (specify the mount points)?

no.  You have no free space.  You have only allocated space.  There is a 
difference between an unused filesystem and unallocated space.

> 3. How can one tell which Windows filesystem (C:, D:, E:) is associated 
> with each /hda (drive) in the installation window? In other words, I 
> want to ensure that I am installing Linux on my E: drive, but in the 
> installation I cannot determire which /hda refers to E:.
>
The Boot partition is typically C.  Then the disks are labled basically 
in order.  You should be able to tell which is which by looking at the 
sizes listed in disk druid when you do the install.

  Jonathan Billings
jsbillings at mac.com