Linux & Partitioning

[STRYPER]

Ok ive read through quite a few threads here and still have some questions.

What i have: IBM T43

What i want: Dual Boot

- partition for Windows XP
- partition for Fedora FC4
- keep backup and recovery partition

What is the simplest way to accomplish this?

Ive havent used IBM Backup and Recovery yet since i just received my laptop the other day, so i dont understand how it all works yet. What i am thinking of doing is using a windows 98 disk to boot into DOS and using FDISK to delete the windows partition. Then create a new partition for windows (40GB), leaving the rest for Fedora, and of course leaving the recovery partition. What im not sure about is if using the backup and recovery option is going to whipe my drive clean and not keep the partitions that ive made intact.

Can anyone guide me through a simple procedure to accomplish this?

[doppelfish]

[...] using a windows 98 disk to boot into DOS and using FDISK to delete the windows partition.

You might get away without FDISKing your windows partition away when you go the ntfsresize route. Note that I didn't waive the need for backups.
I remember that the last SuSE distribution I touched came with a bootable CD which had ntfsresize on it.

cheers,
-- fish

[desdinova]

There are a couple non-destructive ways to do linux on computers that I've looked into:

livecd: nice in that you don't have to mess with your current drive at all and the "good" livecds will let you make a swap and /home directory on one of your current partitions without hurting anything.

http://www.knoppix.org/

linux on USB drive: grab a small USB hard drive like the Monstor (seagate is making them, too, but a little larger) and install linux on that. This is good because you can use it whereever you're at a computer that supports booting from USB.

http://www.usmodular.com/products/monstor_drive.html

colinux: runs linux natively as a windows service. all your linux partitions are disk images. not terribly user friendly to set up. networking works but is a little wonky.

http://www.colinux.org/

I'm currently using colinux (deb unstable) but once I can afford a usb drive, I'll be using that.

It'll be great when the x86 ibooks are out... osx/linux/windows all at once at native speeds. *^_^*

[carbon_unit]

Another good live cd is Simply Mepis:
http://www.mepis.org/
It is a very well set up live cd that can be installed on the hard drive by clicking a button.

If you want to resize NTFS go get Xandros OCE (free)edition. It comes with an NTFS partition resizer, and the distro ain't bad either.
http://www.xandros.com/about/downloads.html

[dummkopf]

I wonder how big that recovery partition is nowadays. I do not care about Windows myself and I deleted my recovery partition long time ago. However, for me it seems like a good idea to burn this partition to a CDR (or DVDR?) and make it bootable. This way one can free up the hard disk and have a recovery disk even if HDD crashes and is to be replaced.

[carbon_unit]

Just make a set of recovery cd's before you remove the recovery partition.

[Ground Loop]

Very important: You do NOT want the recovery partition. In the event you had to use it to restore Windows, it would totally nuke your Linux/Other partitions. I had this exact experience, fortunately with fresh backups because I didn't trust it.

The (5 Gig?) recovery partition is the same thing it burns for you on the recovery media.

The bummer was the to restore Windows, it actually restored the Recovery Partition first, and then used that to do the Windows restore. So it would nuke any other partition in the process. Pretty heavy-handed stuff, but that's the kind of thing you want for reliable Windows recovery.

Now I use Linux to back up Windows ("dd" or "partimage") and like that much better.