Drive partitioning with Win98

Brother-Captain Gaius · Post by **Brother-Captain Gaius** » 2003-06-28 11:25pm

Alright, I'm trying to set up a partition on my shitbox to install Linux, problem is, there is no option for BIOS setup or anything else upon booting the computer. We've long since lost whatever recovery CDs may have come with this aging PoS, is there any other way I can get to the drive formatting/partitioning setup?

Brother-Captain Gaius · Post by **Brother-Captain Gaius** » 2003-06-29 01:12am

Nevermind, I've theoretically figured it out.

Brother-Captain Gaius · Post by **Brother-Captain Gaius** » 2003-06-29 03:17am

Argh this is pissing me off. I am n00bish at this (as if you couldn't already tell)... I ran FDISK and told it to make a frickin' extended DOS partition but it bitched about how my hard drive was being entirely used (despite 6 GBs being free). How the hell do I get that 6 GBs to register as not being used so I can partition the damn thing?

Shadowhawk · Post by **Shadowhawk** » 2003-06-29 04:48am

Er, it sounds like you're not quite set up right.
Microsoft's FDISK only supports Microsoft filesystems; it will not create a Linux partition.
Second, you cannot use FDISK to remove space from one partition and place it in another. FDISK can only work with unallocated disk space. Once a partition is made, you can do nothing further to the partition. If you want to make some unallocated space for the Linux distro to use without wiping out your drive (with FDISK, if your drive is already partitioned to use the full space, you'll have to delete the entire partition and make a new partition that only uses a portion of the drive), you have to use another partitioning program, like Partition Magic.

Be damned careful with partitioning programs. One false move, and you can wipe out your data and make it a real pain in the ass to recover.

GrandMasterTerwynn · Post by **GrandMasterTerwynn** » 2003-06-29 04:50am

JediNeophyte wrote:Argh this is pissing me off. I am n00bish at this (as if you couldn't already tell)... I ran FDISK and told it to make a frickin' extended DOS partition but it bitched about how my hard drive was being entirely used (despite 6 GBs being free). How the hell do I get that 6 GBs to register as not being used so I can partition the damn thing?

Delete the extended DOS partition. You need unpartitioned space to install Linux on.

phongn · Post by **phongn** » 2003-06-29 04:23pm

Use the partition utility that comes with the installer and wipe out your old tables.