[Hydan4]

This is posted on the Windows XP tech forums, but I'm having no luck, hopefully someone on these can.

I have one volume on my computer, and I need to reformat and repartition my hard drive to contain multiple volumes before I begin creating a multiple-boot configuration.

I will be installing Red Hat Linux 9 along w/ my already existing Windows XP OS on my computer.

So how do I create multiple volumes?

[twill]

Well if you are in Windoze right now, you can use any number of software programs. One of those being fdisk which is free with windows or a costly one in Partition Magic which will let you do disk manipulation on the fly without data loss on the disk. There are other various programs which allow you to do this too but I have to say that Partition Magic is pretty darn cool.

If you are starting from scratch, I say you create your dos/win partitions with the dos version of fdisk and then boot your linux cd/floppy and create your linux volumes from that. With the linux partitioning software (on most install disks and part of the install process) I believe it can do on the fly partitioning with disk resizing as well without data loss.

OF course if you're not interested in data loss, you could probably just do what you need to do in each program and be done with it. I believe that the linux partioning program (not fdisk or cfdisk) can also create dos/win partitions too so that might be the best solution in the end.

[Hydan4]

I have 2 hard drives on my computer:
c: 3.91 gb free space
e: 58.1 gb free space

A warning takes place on the mouse configuration screen. It automatically has a 3 button mouse on the PS2 port highlighted, so I choose the 2 button on PS2 and uncheck the "Emulate 3 Buttons" box and click next. The warning then appears and says the partition table on the /dev/hdb is inconsistent.

The errors occur at the Automatic Partitioning Screen. I've tried every type of configuration w/ different selection on how to partition my hard drive except for 'Removing all partitions on this system' and when I click next, and 'yes' i am sure what I want to do, I get these 2 error messages:

1st Error:
______________
Error Partitioning
______________

Could not allocate requested partitions:
Partition failed: Could not allocate partitions as primary partitions.


I click ok and get the 2nd Error:

____________________
Automatic Partition Errors
____________________

You have not defined a root partition (/), which is required for installation of Red Hat Linux to continue.

[Hydan4]

How do I get to dos to run fdisk in winxp?

[twill]

well, the post about fdisk in winxp...

You don't need to use fdisk in xp because XP has a disk management feature. Right click on My Computer and choose manage. Once in the Computer Management console, choose Storage and under that is Disk Management. If you have XPPro, you should be able to resize the partitions on your own, if you have XP Home, I don't think you can resize those partitions, but you can add and remove partitions for Windows.

Are you wanting to resize your existing XP partition?

[Hydan4]

no, i don't think so, i believe i need to create a new partition for the linux os. Is that option availabe?

[Hydan4]

the c: drive has primary and extended fat 32 partitions.
the e: drive has a primary nfts and an extended fat 32 partition.

[twill]

Not in XP unfortunately, but this is okay for us since we can get around it when working in linux.

So when you're running the RedHat install, are you doing the text or the graphical version?

[twill]

The first problem is just related to bad blocks and block checking to remove those blocks.

The second is that you're not creating the mountpoint. This needs to be '/' for the linux root partition on whatever your main partition will be. Then, make sure you also have a swap space that is most often equivalent to the size of RAM that you have.

[Hydan4]

I'm running the graphical version

[twill]

Okay, instead of using the Automatic Partitioning Tool, Use Disk Druid. This will allow you to view the current partition table configuration vs having Linux change things on its own. Also, this way you can manipulate your partition tables how you desire.

Check Disk Druid, record the different partitions, drives and disk types and let me know.

[twill]

When you add your partitions, you basically only need 2 partitions. 1 for swap and one for the root partition. You will not need to set a mount point for the swap partition, but you will need to set the root partition's mount point to '/'. It should be in the dropdown list of mount points.

When you create both of these partitions, you can check the box for bad block checking. This will detect bad blocks on your hard drive since it appears you may have some bad blocks.

Something for you to consider is the fact that with bad blocks, it can sometimes indicate a bad hard drive and you might consider getting it replaced.

[Squashman]

Originally posted by Hydan4:
I have 2 hard drives on my computer:
c: 3.91 gb free space
e: 58.1 gb free space

When you mean free space do you mean unpartitioned space or space that is not being used on the formatted partition.

You are not going to be able to install Linux until you have some unpartitioned space.

If you dont have any unpartitioned space, you will need to use a Partition Manager like Partition Magic to resize your current partitions and free up some unpartitioned space.

[Hydan4]

To Twill: I have ran Disk Druid, but I don't know how to record different partitions to the drives.
It's definately not a bad hard drive, it's new.

To LwdSquashman: I'm saying that is space that is not being used on the formatted partition.

[Squashman]

Originally posted by Hydan4:
To LwdSquashman: I'm saying that is space that is not being used on the formatted partition.

So if you dont have any unpartitioned space, how do you plan on installing Linux?

What do you have on your E: drive? I would try and free up half of that for Linux? Make that partition half that size. Since you probably already have some data on there that you cant lose, you will need to use a program like Partition Magic to resize that partition and free up some unpartitioned space.