Ok, I had the very same problem with an old Seagate HDD (8.6 GB). If you ask me, I'd tell you to
first pre-partition your HDD and format it. To do so, you must use the linux rescue mode. When the boot up screen of Red Hat appears (where you can simply press enter and install) type linux rescue. The installer will attempt to detect a previous install of RH. You can skip it. Now you are presented with a shell. there you should be able to do the necesary stuff:
Now bring up the program fdisk (it's a little like its MS counterpart) by typing:
Code:
[sh-xxx]# fdisk /dev/hda (or which ever is your drive)*
You will be presented wity a promt like this:
Code:
El número de cilindros para este disco está establecido en 4865.
No hay nada malo en ello, pero es mayor que 1024, y en algunos casos
podría causar problemas con:
1) software que funciona en el inicio (p.ej. versiones antiguas de LILO)
2) software de arranque o particionamiento de otros sistemas operativos
(p.ej. FDISK de DOS, FDISK de OS/2)
Orden (m para obtener ayuda):
Ignore the stuff written in Spanish, what matters here is the part saying Orden (command) press 'm' at any time to get help of available commands. If you type 'p' you'll be presented with the current partition table. I'd suggest you erase all partitions from the drive, by pressing 'd'. Add the new partitions ('n'). I'd recommend you to do it in this order:
1st boot (make it about 75 Mb if you intend to use the ext3 filesystem). You'll asign the actual mount points when you install RH.
2nd / (if you do not need to thorough partition your drive you'll need only 3 partitions) Make it so you have twice as your memory of unasigned space.
3rd swap Make it twice as your installed RAM, in your case 192. Change the patition type with 't' and to see the available types type 'l' (type 82 corresponds to swap & 83 to linux native).
Once you are satisfied (remember to check your progress with 'p') sync the disk and write the partition table with 'w'.
Now you can either format your two first partitions with:
Code:
[sh-xxx]# mke2fs /dev/hda1 (your boot, this will format it as ext2)
or
[sh-xxx]# mke2fs -J /dev/hda2 (your / partition, this will format with ext3 FS)
Or you can let the Red Hat installer to format them for you.
I hope this helps you.
*Remember that linux reads the two devices of fist IDE channel as /dev/hda & /dev/hdb respectively.
The speed of the install highly depends (in my experience) in your drives (HDD & CD-ROM) speed, as well as your motherboard's chipset. In a K6 166 Mhz/128 Mb (EDO) RAM it took almost 4 hours due to an issue in the VIA chipset