eh,

i've decided to take the plunge and do a Hdd Install. Knoppix 3.3 works well in my presario laptop so its worth the risk to do a hdd install.

My present setup:
I have one hdd with 4 partitions already. All NTFS!!!! Im using Winxp. My windows is located in the c:\ drive.

C: is 6gb
D: is 8gb
E: is 800mb
F: is 40gb

I will be using partition magic 8. I'm planning to add two partitions.. One using Fat32 and one Ext2. I'm planning to resize my F: partition to give room for my linux partitions.

The Fat32 will be only 512 mb.
The Ext2 will be 2gb.

1st question: Is 2gb too big or too small for a knoppix hdd? What's the recommended size? And also I wanna know how much space would you need in a normal linux?

2nd question: In my using partition magic in creating partitions, will there be problems or issues?

I dont want to use the partition manager that comes with knoppix bec'. im afraid it might miss up my hdd. Note: All my other partitions are NTFS.

1st: Knoppix hat more then 2 GB of programm data, you will need space for your own data.
A linux partition of 5 GB works well for me, but add a swap partition (win calls it virtual memory) at least with the duble of your RAM ( 256 MB RAM = 512 MB swap).
BTW, use ext3, it's journaled.

2st: Very dangerous! (As everything who modify your HDD).
First of all, make a backup of all your stuff (and test it, if it really works!).
I wouldn't use more than 4 partitions and don't forget, the /boot (the directory where the kernel is) MUST be reacable by your BIOS.
And a boot manager is required: LILO, GRUB or the Windows Boot Manager.

My suggestion would be as follows:

C: NTFS
D: FAT32
E: Linux Swap
F: EXT3 via Partition Magic

Don't resize anything, just reformat.
You could (and should, really) Make F 2 EXT3 partitions, a large portion as / , a smaller portion (5-10) gigs as /home.

That should work well for you as a start. As you get familiar with things you WILL change it around...

Several times

I have not used Knoppix, so I can't comment on any specifics for that distro.

HTH

reformating is out of the question bec. i dont have another harddisk(laptop).

my F: drive partition is near full.

You only need to format E as linux swap and F as EXT3. You can use Partition Magic to do this (or some distro's installation routine) and leave the NTFS partitions (C: and D alone. As I said, you don't even need to resize anything (if you don't want to). It would be nice to have a fat32 partition but it isn't needed for an installation.

As an example, my PC at work had a 20 gig HD as 1 NTFS partition.
I resized to create C: NTFS (WIN2K) plus an extended partition.
I then created the following logical partitions in the extended partition.
D: - WIN Data (fat32)
Linux SWAP
/
/home

The linux designations for these drives are:

/dev/hda1 C:\
/dev/hda2 Extended
/dev/hda5 D:\Win Data
/dev/hda6 SWAP
/dev/hda7 /
/dev/hda8 /home

I did all this with PM8 and SuSE's installation routine. I was able to maintain the NTFS partition through the whole process.

In your case, your partitions are already there for you, tho you may want to change the size of some of them, it isn't required right now.

I will skip the obvious warning that making an error WILL screw you up - just be careful.

HTH

God, I really need to read better....

I just saw F: Drive FULL

sigh

Well the above still applies, just not to you

I'll write a more coherent reply when I get to work.

This is my present setup:
http://appstart.20m.com/part.jpg

C: NTFS Primary
D: NTFS Logical
E: FAT32 Logical
F: NTFS


This is what Im gonna do:
http://appstart.20m.com/pending.jpg

I''ll resize my F drive and leave the freed space as unallocated. By unallocated it should means its neither NTFS or anything.

1. Could I just boot using any linux distro CD and let it do the rest?
(something like slackware where it will just guide me during installation)

2. Or do I first need to divide my (newly) unallocated free space to two Ext3 and one swap partition using PartitionMagic?

Something like this:

1st Ext3 = 2.3gb
2nd Ext3 = 100mb for /home
swap = 200mb

Slackware's FULL install option with all package groups, except games and the KDE international package, will take up about 2.2 gigs of an undivided / . You really should allow enough space so that you are not over 85% (or less) disk usage.

I just installed Slack on my old laptop (TP600). This is my current disk usage with no added software or data.

/dev/hda1 SWAP 302 MB
/dev/hda2 /boot EXT2 21 MB 4 MB used
/dev/hda3 / reiserfs 4.0 GB 2.2 GB used
/dev/hda4 /home reiserfs 561 MB 32 MB used

Now, you could certainly elect to not insall other package groups - GNOME or KDE for example - and not use as much disk space.

If I were you I would try to free up more of the F: directory. I think you'll be happier if you can give yourself 5 to 7 GB to play with. Then you can install everything so you can explore and still have room to add stuff (like Open Office).

Bare in mind that most other distros will take up more space than slack on a standard install.

What you have planned will work. With such a small linux partition, just have a single / directory (no separate /home). And be frugal with what you choose to install (KDE or Gnome - not both, etc).

One added caution with Partition Magic. If you ever plan on using partition magic after you install linux - even just to open the program and look at your partition scheme from within windows - DO NOT change the partition sizes using a linux fdisk during linux installation (formatting existing partitions is not a problem).

For example, I use PM8 to create SWAP and / partitions from within windows. I start the linux installation routine and I decide to resize my / to be / and /home using the linus fdisk. I then install linux. Every thing works fine. 2 months later I'm in windows and I decide to open PM for some reason. I reboot to start linux and "kernel panic". My linux installation will not boot.

It seems that PM does not like the way linux fdisk programs resize partitions. With PM7, I at least got the option to decide if PM was going to try to "fix" what it considered a problem. PM8 just goes ahead and "fixes" it, thus screwing up your linux install. (XP will be fine).

These were my experinces. YMMV

The short answers to your 2 questions are...

1. Depends on the distro. All that I've used give you some type of option to pick a format scheme and file system type. Please refer to my PM8 notes above.

2. See 1. I have found it easiest to create my partions using PM8 (which can only do EXT2, EXT3, Linux SWAP) and let the installation routine find the linux partions and let it create reiserfs or reformat the EXT3 partion prior to installation of your chosen package groups. In other words, resize with PM (on a dual boot situation), reformat existing linux partitions during linux install.

HTH

Sorry for long post.