Format Windows partition inside linux. How?
 

Hey,
I've recently installed FC4, and managed to get everything working just as i like so want to (almost!!) do away with my windows partition. This is basically because my harddrive is only 20Gig so too small to run 2OS's efficiently. Basically what i want to so is:
1. Format my Windows NTFS partition (mounted at /dev/hda1)
2. Partition it so i can have about 2gig to run Counterstrike on in windows, the rest in ext3 (9g).
3. Merge the new ext3 partition (about 9g) with the 8gb i use to run FC4 in.
4. Install windows on a virtual machine in VMWareto run some progs out of .
Is this a viable and logical plan? because i'm running out of space on my linux partition and need more. If so what programmes do i need to impliment it? I don't really want to reinstall linux because it was a pain in the ass to get everything working so is it ok if the mount point is halfway up my hard-drive? Also what is the advantage of a swap partition in linux and how do i make one.
Any response to any of these questions is greatly appreciated.
Kind regards,
Graham

hmm that is going to be a lot more work than you want. It would probably require reinstalling both windows and linux. What i would recommend is just getting a second harddrive because they are cheap and would save you alot of time.

Yer i know it will be a lot ot work thats fine, and reinstalling windows is obviously going to happen, but not a problem as i can do it in 40mins or so. Linux would take me days so not really an option. Neither is getting a new harddrive as i'm running a laptop.
Basically i want to know the command to format my /dev/hda1 NTFS partition (where windows is) to EXT3 and merge it with my /dev/hda2 EXT3 partition where linux is. Any ideas?

I take it that, what you wanna do is rid windows and rearrange/resize then partitions to give more space to linux and install vmware to run Counter-strike. Have you made sure you can run Counter-strike using vmware or you planning on using Cedega to run Counter-strike ? May be, this would make you change your mind into retaining windows installtion or may be not ! In case you wanna go ahead and wipe windows to make home for linux, coma back and tell us so and some/one of us can help you with your plans though it's a lot of work like tamoneya said.



Swap space is kinda RAM, difference being swap is just a partition on the disk which is used as RAM. Though it's not as fast as RAM yet, it'd speed up the processes boosting performance. If you have huge amounts of RAM like 1 GB or more, you possible wouldn't need a swap space although it's not a bad idea to have one. I have 256MB RAM and a 400 MB of swap which linux only uses when I run multimedia apps or too many apps.

Rite,

This is a little complicated, basically because i didn't know how well i'd take to linux i kept my existing windows partition. However i realise now that i don't want windows to be installed on such a large partition so i want to:
1. Wipe my windows partition (11gb).
2. Re-partition it to be 500mb of swap and the rest EXT3

Now it gets complicated.

3. Move my linux filesystem "down" the harddrive so its mounted at the beginning (or after the swap).
4. Format the remaining 8gb where linux originally was.
5. Create a 2gb NTFS partition to install windows on.
6. Merge the remaing 6gb EXT3 onto the first harddrive

Bascially at the moment my harddrive looks like this:
WINDOWS (ntfs 11gig)---LINUX (ext3 8gig)

I want it to look like this:
SWAP (0.5gig)---LINUX (ext3 16.5gig)---WINDOWS (NTFS 2gig)

Is this possible or just, like that annoying MS screensaver, a pipe dream. Regards,
Graham

i see what you are trying to do but i would recommend doing this
I want it to look like this:
/dev/hda SWAP (.5GB)---LINUX (ext3 10.5GB)---LINUX(ext3 8GB)
/dev/hdb WINDOWS(NTFS something bigger)
that doesnt require merging the partitions and runnign windows on just 2GB does not sound like a very good idea. I think it might get very angry at you.
you can mount the second linux partition onto some part of the original one giving you just one linux OS
ex: mount /dev/hda2 /var or some other part of the filesystem

Hey,
I decided that i couldn't be bothered moving everything around on my harddrive, looked like too much hassle and nobody really had any ideas of how to do it, so i formatted and started again. Kind of rueing that decision now though, as i seem to have lost my windows cd!! Oh well.
Cheers for your help
Graham

Ntfs
 

Is is possible to format a brand new disk in NTFS from linux?

I have created the partition, but I'm not sure how to format it...

Would mkfs /dev/sdc make the thing? Basically what I want to do is to have an empty NTFS disk (external USB)that I could put JPEG file on it (from my linux box) and then move around to my other friends computers(they are on windows...)


Thanks

Claude

Why not make the external Drive Fat32 ?
Easily mounted from Windows or Linux..
less compatability issues than with NTFS..

You can format a NTFS filesystem using the ntfsprogs tool mkntfs. I've never used this tool so no idea how well it works. NTFS write support is supposed to be pretty good in the 2.6.15 kernel.