[andywarhol]

I'm new to using linux but aware that i will have to partition my harddrive for XP + Linux. I've been told you can reinstall XP and configure the partitions there, or buy Partition magic. Is partition magic user-friendly? If not, i am sure there will be problems. I'm aware that using Linux can cause problems and ultimately blow your HD if you dont know what your doing ( i will not know what im doing ) .... I cant say i have anything important on my harddrive except for a few games, some old HW i dont care about and a bunch of music. .... Backing up Windows - is it worth it? On the Partition Magic site, where you can download a demo, it says something about Windows .Net 2003 and the word "not" in the same sentence. I was told Unix or almost-the-same, Linux is good for the c++ world and stuff... Do i have to reinstall .NET in the other half of my HD.......
i have a lot more questions about Linux, so basically just say anything you can about Linux, Partitioning, etc. and im sure that it will be an answer to one of my millions of questions.....Ty smart people

[izme]

Originally Posted by andywarhol

I'm new to using linux but aware that i will have to partition my harddrive for XP + Linux. I've been told you can reinstall XP and configure the partitions there, or buy Partition magic. Is partition magic user-friendly? If not, i am sure there will be problems. I'm aware that using Linux can cause problems and ultimately blow your HD if you dont know what your doing ( i will not know what im doing ) .... I cant say i have anything important on my harddrive except for a few games, some old HW i dont care about and a bunch of music. .... Backing up Windows - is it worth it? On the Partition Magic site, where you can download a demo, it says something about Windows .Net 2003 and the word "not" in the same sentence. I was told Unix or almost-the-same, Linux is good for the c++ world and stuff... Do i have to reinstall .NET in the other half of my HD.......
i have a lot more questions about Linux, so basically just say anything you can about Linux, Partitioning, etc. and im sure that it will be an answer to one of my millions of questions.....Ty smart people

Although I am not a linux Expert, I bought Partition majic and I love the Program!! Easy to use and alot easier than Formatting and partitioning your drive and quicker.
It's a very handy utility and I highly recommend it to anyone, others here use it also, that's how I found out about it.

You will have a new partition up in no time.

[Dirk Gently]

I have a bit of experience with Partition Magic and Linux together, and I think it works wonderfully. It's also extremely user friendly, and if you install it on XP, you can shrink your XP partition and make ones for linux without losing any XP data at all (assuming it's done correctly, which isn't hard). Their "BootMagic" boot manager works well, too. (I use it to boot Windows 2000, Windows98 and Slackware Linux with no trouble.)

[HappyHacker]

I am going with Dirk Gently on this one. I have done the same with excellent results.
Just pull off what you can afford to lose on your XP partition and use the partitioning utilitys that come with you choice of linux to setup the disk. You will need a few different partitions depending on your choice.


I however used LILO for a boot loader untill I installed Lycoris-Redmond linux. I actually prefered it, the default was Lycoris, but I figured if my computer were ever "cracked" it would auto re-boot to Linux. And give no room for a cracker to get in.

[shadowcat]

I like Partition Magic as well, but you are only allowed to install it on one computer. I suppose this is Symantec's doing since they bought company that made Partition Magic.

Another program that I'm considering is Acronis Disk Director.

[lynch]

Originally Posted by shadowcat

I like Partition Magic as well, but you are only allowed to install it on one computer. I suppose this is Symantec's doing since they bought company that made Partition Magic.

I have never seen the point in actually installing PM on a computer. I just make the boot/utility disks and do all the work under dos.
lynch

[Adiletante]

I just recently used Partition Magic to get going with Linux. I found it wasn't as useful setting up my second hard drive - I ended up just using my linux installation for that, but had I wanted to partition one drive to use linux and XP, it has a wizard that will walk you through setting up a partition for linux. And Boot Magic has come in handy to boot to Linux or XP. Very helpful for the beginner.

[andywarhol]

so its worth the 70 bucks or w/e it costs ?

[Elvandil]

Most Linux installers will take care of the partitioning for you. They are equipped to be a secondary operating system on a machine with Windows installed.

Once you get a Linux distro installed, you can use QTParted to manage partitions. QTParted is a Linux clone of Partition Magic and is released under the GNU license (free).

http://sourceforge.net/projects/qtparted/

If you'd prefer to try Linux without making any changes to your drive, I'd suggest Knoppix. It runs completely from CD and you can install packages after booting from the CD. It doesn't need any hard drive at all, but setting aside some space for saving things (the CD is read-only, of course) and a small swap file makes it run all the better. Knoppix is amazing. I was even surfing the net with it all while running completely from the CD (the more memory you have, the better).

http://www.knoppix.org/

Another possibility is Dragon Linux. It can be installed to a loopback file on a FAT partition, so you don't need to make any major changes to your machine.

http://sourceforge.net/projects/dragonlinux/

Partition Magic will certainly do the job, is very user friendly (7 seems easier than 8 to me), but you may just want to read your Linux docs---you may not need PM.

I'd suggest Ranish, but it is less user-friendly, though free.

[andywarhol]

well when i boot with red hat in and i start the instal everythign goes fine until the partition part, it says like would u like to partition blah blah something....but then i get some error and it doesnt let me continue from that point.

[andywarhol]

thats what made me think i needed partion magic

[Elvandil]

PM will do the job, for sure. Maybe the Red Hat installer doesn't like NTFS.

You said something about reinstalling XP to configure partitions. Is XP installed now? If it is, and you have more than one partition, you can manage the partitions in Disk Management. But if you have only one partition, XP won't help since it can't change the partition it is running from.

You might just try the free Ranish Partition Manager. It has a simulation mode so you can carry out all the options without actually doing anything to your drive and see if you have the process right.

http://sf.ranish.com/

The trouble with buying PM is that you may need it only once. If you think you can use it more often, or you don't care, great. But it seems a waste to buy it just for this one project.

What partitions exactly do you have now?

[I Fix 4 U]

OK i hope you havent bought partition magic because i have a free alternative. most people wont partition their harddrives everyday so why waste the money on partition magic. besides whats all the hype about that program. Powerquest did a good job of it but symantec botched partition magic as well as norton's antivirus. PM ruined my harddrive where qtparted, a free graphical tool, does what partition magic should do without breaking anything and is a free download. This will work with linux and windows (even ntfs and reiser) and is a really nice tool. It runs off a cd so you dont have to worry about writing over it or installing it to you harddrive. You can find the linux livecd (which contains qtparted) here: http://www.sysresccd.org/