Re: [newbie] Formating IDE HD
Thanks Doug, At 01:30 PM 28/09/2000 -0400, you wrote: Find a distro that has the old text installation on it (RH 5.2, for instance) and run that. When you get to the option for fdisk, delete any and all existing partitions of size or type. Don't forget to "save" the results. You should then see that there is the whole disk available to partition. I have seen instances where it was next to impossible to get rid of NT, but Linux's fdisk will do it. (If you don't have an old distro, I _think_ that tomsrtbt has fdisk on it, and you can run that from a floppy.) Let the group know if this works. --doug, wa2say At 11:31 PM 09/27/2000 +0200, you wrote: Hello. I have been trying to install Linux Mandrake in my old computer and now I cannot create a Linux partition. Starting form my 1.2 Gigabyte IDE-HD with Windows NT4 system, I first deleted the ancient NT partition and created a new PRI-DOS partition (using fdisk). When I tried to reformat the HD (using the DOS format command) I found that only 4M existed !!! I have tried using MIPS to shrink the DOS partition and create a Linux partition (at least 1G) unsuccessfully. MIPS gave an error in the boot record. Then I tried to install Linux Mandrake 7.0 from a diskette using rawwrite but I got the "no partition available" error. I would like advice on how to define a partition for Linux (at least 1G). The BIOS does not allow me to boot from CD. Thank you.
Re: [newbie] Formating IDE HD
Find a distro that has the old text installation on it (RH 5.2, for instance) and run that. When you get to the option for fdisk, delete any and all existing partitions of size or type. Don't forget to "save" the results. You should then see that there is the whole disk available to partition. I have seen instances where it was next to impossible to get rid of NT, but Linux's fdisk will do it. (If you don't have an old distro, I _think_ that tomsrtbt has fdisk on it, and you can run that from a floppy.) Let the group know if this works. --doug, wa2say At 11:31 PM 09/27/2000 +0200, you wrote: Hello. I have been trying to install Linux Mandrake in my old computer and now I cannot create a Linux partition. Starting form my 1.2 Gigabyte IDE-HD with Windows NT4 system, I first deleted the ancient NT partition and created a new PRI-DOS partition (using fdisk). When I tried to reformat the HD (using the DOS format command) I found that only 4M existed !!! I have tried using MIPS to shrink the DOS partition and create a Linux partition (at least 1G) unsuccessfully. MIPS gave an error in the boot record. Then I tried to install Linux Mandrake 7.0 from a diskette using rawwrite but I got the "no partition available" error. I would like advice on how to define a partition for Linux (at least 1G). The BIOS does not allow me to boot from CD. Thank you.
Re: [newbie] Formating IDE HD
Don't you just love fs support by MS?! Well, I can't see any reason for not wanting to flash the bios, especially, if it will add something as convenient as a bootable cd-rom. Short of that maybe you can get a hold of a partition magic floppy? If you have another Linux machine maybe you could make a bootable floppy disk with the Linux version fdisk? Larry Ricardo Zevallos wrote: Hello. I have been trying to install Linux Mandrake in my old computer and now I cannot create a Linux partition. Starting form my 1.2 Gigabyte IDE-HD with Windows NT4 system, I first deleted the ancient NT partition and created a new PRI-DOS partition (using fdisk). When I tried to reformat the HD (using the DOS format command) I found that only 4M existed !!! I have tried using MIPS to shrink the DOS partition and create a Linux partition (at least 1G) unsuccessfully. MIPS gave an error in the boot record. Then I tried to install Linux Mandrake 7.0 from a diskette using rawwrite but I got the "no partition available" error. I would like advice on how to define a partition for Linux (at least 1G). The BIOS does not allow me to boot from CD. Thank you. -- Larry Hignight Descent 3 Beta Tester Caldera Linux 2.4 7:00pm up 2 days, 22:56, 4 users, load average: 0.10, 0.05, 0.01
