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Partitioning Hard Drive

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  • 11-06-2003 11:59am
    #1
    Bacchus
    Registered Users Posts: 4,701 ✭✭✭


    Hey all,
    I have a desktop with Windows 2000 Pro on it and I want to put NT and Red Hat on instead.
    How do you wipe the current partition and create new partitions for NT and Red Hat?
    AFAIK, I need a boot disk and use FDISK to partition the drive but I don't know where to get one.
    Any links/helps/advice is much appreciated.


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    #2
    Kali
    Closed Accounts Posts: 6,601 ✭✭✭Kali


    NT? why go back to NT?

    anyway...
    go to bootdisk.com download a win98 boot disk image.. nearly all of them have fdisk on it.

    fdisk is self explanatory, regards deleting partitions... just dont expect to get any data back :)

    create 3 primary partitions..
    one for NT one for redhat and one for a linux swap partition (a gig should be more than enough).

    I'd install NT first then with the bootable cd, choose the first partition, and make sure you format it NTFS in the menu options.

    Once thats done, Redhat should avoid overwriting that automatically and install itself on the second partition... if theres an option in the installation somewhere to choose a swap parition then point it at the 1gb.


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    #3
    Bacchus
    Registered Users Posts: 4,701 ✭✭✭Bacchus


    Thanks, I'll see how that goes.
    As for the change back to NT, it's not my PC I'm doing this on. I'm doing this for a friend with reasons unknown.


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    #4
    Capt'n Midnight
    Moderators, Recreation & Hobbies Moderators, Science, Health & Environment Moderators, Technology & Internet Moderators Posts: 91,761 Mod ✭✭✭✭Capt'n Midnight


    NT / W2K / Redhat CD's are all bootable with partition utilites..

    If you have a copy of partition magic you can resize the existing partition to provice space for the new ones.

    Install order Dos / win9x / NT / 2k / Xp / Linux (as each recognises the previous one)

    If you setup the first partition as a 2GB FAT 16
    (NB if windows 9x turn off large drive support in Fdisk - it should be labelled FAT32 ) Everything will see it and can share it.
    ie. this is the Windows system partition - you can then setup a data partition later on. NT must be installed on a partition in the first 4 or 8 GB - can't remember of the HDD .. - also means that the Redhat swap partition and boot partition 16MB if used will all be in the first 4GB

    NTFS for NT system is not a good idea - too few recovery options. FAT 16 allows you to degrag with win 95 and you can use dos 5 to delete or reload files - for practical purposes only a working copy of NT/2K/XP can overwrite or delete corrupt files from an NTFS partition.
    eg: If less than 120MB free on the NTFS partition you can't even reinstall NT - Game Over.

    (with xp/2k you can install cmdcons as a limited back door..)

    After installing the system partitions you can install the data ones further down the disk.


    Alternatively look at www.knoppix.com - a bootable linux CD - no changes needed to HDD at all - 700MB download - set your bios to boot from CD - make CD - reboot - wait - change keyboard to UK , use wizard to change desktop (yes it's GUI ) to a certain style (ie like windows) you can look up the help in the GUI while trying out the console - also has openoffice and a gaggle of linux utils .. (Ok it's not redhat - debian )


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