On Thursday 12 February 2004 05:20 am, John Richard Smith wrote:
Marc Resnick wrote:
Last time I tried to make a partition to give Linux more hard drive space, I completely screwed up Linux. Here's my plan for doing it this time. If there's anything I might screw up by doing this, please tell me.
1. Use Partition Magic in windows to resize my NTFS Windows Partition.
2. Boot Linux, use Diskdrake to create a partition from the free space, place it at the end of the sector.(I want to use Linux to do this so it 'knows' that I added this partition. Last time I think the problem was that it took mdk by surprise, screwing up the labels.)
3. Do ln /home/marc /mnt/nameofpartition
Sound good?
I would not do this. If windows and linux are on the same hard drive then use PM for all partitoning.
If they are on seperate hard drives use PM on windows HD, and diskdrake on Linux HD.
If you use PM on windblows HD then format all partitions initially with FAT32 and let PM give each partition a volume lable.
Then, when in diskdrake of Linux install, reformat the already partitioned HD with linux formatting tools, but don't let it do any partitioning itself.
If you have a linux only HD, then use diskdrake to do both partition and formatting.
So plan what you are going to do and follow that scheme of things.
The one thing I always avoid is mixing partition tools on the same hard drive. Others disagree with me, but I have always found this to be the case and doing this I avoid all kinds of messups that take 5 times as much time to repair than if I had taken an 'n'th more time and trouble in the first place.
I believe there are good solid reasons not to mix partition tools on the same HD. It is not just the method used to calculate partition sizes, but dos naming conventions as well. Hmm, you might say , who cares about dos naming convention, dos is history. Not so, some modern OS's still need certain uptodate dos naming conventions,
eg. One primary. One extended dos partition, containing any number of logical dos partitions) old dos naming convention does not follow that pattern. I believe Diskdrake does the old dos naming convention and can be the cause of grief. So Diskdrake creates, Up to 4 primary dos partitions, one extended containing any number of logicals.
At the end of the day you want hard drives whose partitioning sizing is consistantly measured. Hard drives that follow modern dos naming convention.
I have always followed the abovementioned rules and find them to be trouble free.
No install refusals, no messed up partitions wasteful in dead HD space.
I had a tiny old HD that I partition entirely with W2K just to see what dos naming convention resulted , that is how I learnt about modern dos naming convention. Then of course if I had usedthe old dos fdisk I can choose , but neither of these two partition tools can save existing data. So don't bother with them.
If you have PM use it on the windblows HD to do all partitioning and initally format them with FAT32 and give the partitions a volume lable. then format the partitions allocated to linux with diskdrake during the linux install.
John
John,
I'm partly afraid of using Partition Magic now. Last time I created a FAT32 partition, I couldn't delete it. I permanently(or at least permanently for my knowledge) screwed up fstab, and had to reinstall linux, then use diskdrake to successfully delete the partition. But If I just resize the NTFS partition with PM, I could safely use diskdrake to create the partition at the end of the Extended, am I correct?
--Marc
------------------------------------------------------------------------
Want to buy your Pack or Services from MandrakeSoft? Go to http://www.mandrakestore.com
Part 1.1
Content-Type:
text/plain Content-Encoding:
7BIT
------------------------------------------------------------------------ message.footer
Content-Type:
text/plain Content-Encoding:
8bit
------------------------------------------------------------------------
Want to buy your Pack or Services from MandrakeSoft? Go to http://www.mandrakestore.com
Part 1.1
Content-Type:
text/plain Content-Encoding:
7BIT
------------------------------------------------------------------------ message.footer
Content-Type:
text/plain Content-Encoding:
8bit
At the end of the day the decision whether to use PM has to be yours. All I can add is, that in my now fairly extensive experience I would not mix my partition tools on the same drive.
If something went wrong with PM last time it has to be because you did something
wrong with it. In my experience it is a fine partioning tool. I would not use PM to
repartion anything diskdrake has already created though.If you create something with PM
use PM to alter it, If you created a partion with diskdrake use it to undo it.
So if you have this HD and it has a windblows ntfs partion with a windblows OS, I
would use PM to resize it. then with the remaining disc space I would use PM to partion it for my linux install, I would have PM format those linux partitions in FAT 32 and assign a volume label, helps to keep track of which partition does what. Then leave PM and reboot into the linux boot disc and proceed to intall the linux OS, and when you come to the choosing of partions I would have diskdrake format those linux partitions. It has never failed me doing this.There may be other ways of
doing it, but that is what I would do. If you do what you propose, and you want to resize a diskdrake partioning later on it can lead to difficulties when that repartioning has been done with anything that is not the same partioning convention as the windblows OS use.
For me the golden rule is never mix partioning tools on the same HD. You already have a windblows OS that you do not want to disturb, fine, PM will easily repartion that OS's partition and retain data.
To me your question ought to be what did I do wrong with PM to mess up the your first experience.
PM, is quite a slow tool, if you use it to repartion , reformat and assign a volume label it certainly takes it's time, especially if the partions are large, but then it does more than that, it checks up on your drive and looks for bad sectors, if it finds any it marks them for you so that nothing gets written over those bad sectors in any future install, and that bad sector is written to the drives sectret index of the hard drives construct, that is important. You do not want wonky installs on bad sectors. All this
takes a long time. I remember partioning a 40 gig drive last time and about 8 partions took the best part of an evening to accomplish. But it was worth it.
What version do you have, is it the latest, cannot remember what the latest version number is but
mine can format and recognise ext2, but not the other linux file systems. For that reason alone I would not use PM to final format a linux OS install, but it's perfectly good enough to format and check for bad sectors on any partion in any windbows file system. Once those bad sectors are marked they remain marked. After that use diskdrake to reformat those partions during the install prcedures.
John
Want to buy your Pack or Services from MandrakeSoft? Go to http://www.mandrakestore.com
