I installed SUSE on IDE-Pri 120GB HD that was all NTFS in 3 partitions.

After installing SUSE 10.1, after my Windows C: partition there is a 16-GB partition labeled "unallocated," I tried Partition Magic and Windows Disk Management tools, but they won't tpuch the unallocated partition. If it was 2 or 3 Gigs I wouldn't mind, but the 40-GB partition isn't used by either Windows or inux, and it's 16-GB.

I looked on th WD website and there was nothibg but instructions on hew to recover the space with Windows disk management (right click on "new partition") but "new partition" is greyed out.

I hesitate to use Fdisk on WinXpPro for fear of losing my Windows setup.

Excuse any typing errors. I'm typing one-handed (fingr) due to left hand injury.

You can try using GParted from linux (or the GParted Live CD) to free the space and format as something useful.

Also, if you already have 4 primary partitions, you may not be able to use that space until you suck it up into one of the other partitions.

Can you post a better description of your disk geometry (fdisk -l should help)? Something like

I have a pretty recent live CD of gparted and it choked on my NTFS setup. To solve my problem I just stopped running winbloze. Ahhh, that felt grand.

Right, Linux fdisk is perfectly safe with any partitioning chores. I've used it to set up many multiboots with Linux, BSD, OS/2, bloze, etc. But like any other *NIX command line tool, it does what you tell it, so be certain you understand what you're doing.

It's really best to do all the partitioning before installing anything. If you've already got a bloze installation and you want to add other OS to the mixture, try Kanotix qtparted to shrink your NTFS partition and then use it or fdisk to do the rest. As PJ said you must understand how to manage the space. If you lock yourself into 4 primaries you won't be able to access the rest of the area if you've not allocated it in one of the primaries.

Neat proggie. I'll keep that around in a safe place!

I currently have 4 partition on my first HD: NTFS, Linux, NTFS, Linux.

Thanks for your advice on splitting thing up before installing. I'm going to install Kubuntu this afternoon but I'll set up the correct arrangement of partitions first.

I'll set them up as NTFS (30 GB), NTFS (35 GB), Extended, /hda1(20 GB), /hda2 (20 GB), /hda3 (20), and then a 1 GB swap. Milage may vary to use most all of the 120 GBytes

That should work, No?

You may be having the same problem when I setup my Linux system. There is a max of 4 physical partitions allowed. I had to basically resize my windows down. So I created a 25 gig Linux partition, 2 gig swap partition, a 25 gig NTFS for my MP3's, and left the rest for the winblows NTFS partition. Then mounted the MP3 into Linux.

Now to install Kubuntu.

2 NTFS partitions
/hda1 for my Linux stuff (my proggies: mapping, utilties, media, plain old data, whatever trips my trigger)
/hda2 for Linux's Linux stuff (system & system installed proggies)
/swap for Linux

Now if I can just direct the installation to do that!

And yes, I did have that problem of not having an extended partiyion. I fixed that, thanx.

I touted SuperGRUB as being the "everything" proggie for partitioning, but basically it appears to be only a boot utility, although it apperantly hanles everything boot-related.

But it was the recommendation of memer "pljvaldez" who led me to GParted, which is Linux's cryptic GRUB Partition Editor. A very solid piece of software.

It's actually Gnome Partition Editor...

That doesn't matter since he called you a "memer" What's a memer?