Hi guys,

I'm a linux newbie and installed Slack 9.0 together with XP on my new 120GB Maxtor disk. My partition setup looks as follows:

- Root Slackware Linux
- Root XP
- Extended
|
|- Linux Swap
|- Linux User
|- Linux ...
|- Linux ...
|_ XP data

Everything works surprisingly well, the only problem is that if I want to acces logic partition under XP (XP data partition), the hard drive becomes extremely loud, I can hear it accross the room. When accessing the first XP partition C:, the disk is quiet. The same can be said about the slack partitions, no problem with my hard drive when using slackware.
I think the problem may occur when Windows wants to access 'XP data' partition, because it is at the very end of part 'Extended', behind several slackware partitions. Therefore my hard drive has to skip existing slack partitions each time it wants to acces 'XP data', making the disk very loud. Is that true? Do you have any explanation for this?
I know this problem is not Slackware related, but perhaps you can help me. Thanks.

My first thought would be some type of filesystem problem. Have you check this partiton lately?

The filesystem for 'XP data' is NTFS of course. I checked it using scandisk and Partition Magic, no problems reported. All read-write operations on this partition work correctly, it's just very loud. I hope it's not caused by damaged hard drive.
btw. the scheme above has been generated by Partition Magic, so I really think that the windows logic partition 'XP data' is located behind all the linux partitions.
Shall I try to merge two XP partitions into one (root) partition? Is it worth trying?

Hi

I used Partition Magic once in a dual-boot system for merging two NTFS partitions and, well, it wasn't so pleasant. Besides, it does not recognize Linux partitions other than ext2 and ext3. So i looked for other ways to do it and i found qtparted - a graphical front-end for GNU parted that does all the dirty work very well and looks like PM (so far i haven't experienced any data loss with it). I use it from within a live cd to ensure even more safety (working from a live cd allows me to manage all the disk whitout mounting anything), although i also used it for resizing-merging reiserfs partitions under Slackware (with my main partition mounted and working) whitout any problem. Third part extensions are needed to manage NTFS and some other partition types. www.gnu.org/software/parted qtparted.sourceforge.net

Thanks for the advice. I think I'm going to merge that two partitions, hopefully it will solve my problem with loud hard drive. Fortunatelly, no programs are currently installed on 'XP data', there is just a copy of my old disk.