I am on my way to partition my hard disk to make space for my Linux and Windows XP. Will I lose my existing partition(for recovery purposes) using any available free partition tools? Which partition tool is best and easy to use?

Partition Magic 8 worked perfect for me. I just resized my Windows partition, left the rest as free space and then ran the Fedora Core 2 installer which let me create the Linux partition. Only problem is that the demo is worthless. You'll have to either buy it or get it "another" way...

I've successfully used ntfsresize and parted a few times ... :)


Cheers,
Tink

I tried using ntfsresize but it just spewed errors. I broke down and *gasp* bought Partition Magic. It's an awesome program, and does everything for you. The only problem is... you need to buy it.

Well, How much does Partition Magic Cost? Can I buy it online?

Why don't you just use the partitioning tool that is present with distro installers? Is that an option for you? It always worked for me.

my hdd:
disk0 - 0:winxp 1:native, boot 2: ext2 / 3:linuxswap
and the rest of the disk: 40gb unformatted

When I installed linux my hdd only had winxp in a 2.5 gb partition, the rest was unformatted space.

I have also installed linux with there being a few ntfs partitions already on the drive - just used the partition tool that came with the distro install to repartition, or in the other case, to make some linux partitions.

Hope you find your solutution.

machiner

http://www.powerquest.com/

First hit on Google....

I wish I could use the existing partitioning tool; fips.exe; from my distro CD, the problem is that I can't find my IMAGE or MIRROR file (something like 'attrib -r -s -h miror.***) which can still write to my partition and corrupt the HD. I used the search tool on my WinXP to search for them but nothing about them found. I want to delete them inorder for fips.exe to proceed. Any idea how to find it?

Ntfsreize has much stricter consistency checks than Partition Magic and it refuses to work if your NTFS has already problems. In these cases you must run chkdsk /f on Windows first: http://mlf.linux.rulez.org/mlf/ezaz/...ze.html#chkdsk

Those of you that used Partition Magic to partition. Any of you using Redhat 9 and Boot Magic? I'v set my son's system to dual boot W98SE and XP Pro using Boot Magic 8. So far so good. I installed a second drive and would like to experiment with loading Redhat 9 on the 2nd drive while using Boot Magic (rather than LILO or GRUB) as the boot loader. Any suggestions on how to do this without messing up the mbr? PM's help files say that I must not partition using either the linux fdisk or the Druid. RH9 seems to want to use just these partition tools. It (so far) hasn't given me the option to use PM8's partitioning capabilities. Just in case you all haven't already figured it out. I'm a Linux neophyte. I installed RH6.2 and dual-booted with W98 some time ago (LILO loader). Just got the RH9 and thought that I would try again.

Help me out here, please.

cptgse