On Fri, Mar 14, 2003 at 11:50:59AM +0000, Luke Stutters wrote: > Could I defrag my Win98SE disc from linux? It's a bit difficult to do in > Windows, as it insists on writing to the disc for no reason while defragging, > which slows it down a lot. > __________________________________________________
You could make a complete backup of your FAT partition containing Win98SE, (I used tar), then wipe the partition clean (using rm), and then reatore from backup. Of course, they you had better have enought space for the complete backup somewhere. I used a remote NFS-mounted partition on another machine for the backup, which Windows installation would have a hard time trashing (especially if you dosconnect the net!). It worked for me, while I was still installing Win98SE. During installation, it would repeatedly crash in different ways -- once I had the basic system working and had to install proper video drivers, printer drivers, etc. By backing up before installing each component, and, in case of failure, wiping and restoring from backup, I was able to get the thing working on only two or three days. Otherwise it would have taken over a week. All the time, Mandrake Linux worked just fine (although I did make sure to have a boot disk, and I did test it before I relied on it. So, I needed Linus to install Windows! I was worried that Windows might have position-dependent information that would become dislodged by this process, but in my installation, at least, that wasn't the case. I can't say if there would be something that would make it all fail on your system. But if you are worried, you might try making an extra backup af all user data, and when everything faile, reinstalling Windows from acratch and then restoring user data from backup. Of course yopu't better make sure you have a Mandrake bootdisk first, or you won't be able to get to Linux at all after the reinstall. -- hendrik > Do You Yahoo!? > Everything you'll ever need on one web page > from News and Sport to Email and Music Charts > http://uk.my.yahoo.com > > Want to buy your Pack or Services from MandrakeSoft? > Go to http://www.mandrakestore.com
Want to buy your Pack or Services from MandrakeSoft? Go to http://www.mandrakestore.com
