Well I am newbie I got tired of all the Microsoft Crap downloaded Mandrake 9.1 all 3 cd's and then wiped Windows and said to my fiancee' this is now our OS we are going to learn it !!!

Any way install went well very happy !!! Now I have question I have a 40 gig Western Digital drive 7200 rpm now Mandrake only assign I believe 8 gigs and I still see the other 32 or so not being used for the OS

How do I properly partion this drive so it uses my whole system

Cheers


PS
I am converted

It depends upon your use of the machine.

Proper Filesystem Layout

My favorite for a home workstation:

/boot - 100 MB
swap - 128 MB
/ - 3.5 GB
/home - the rest

I don't think that is what he was asking, he's asking why its not detecting his whole 40 GB drive but only using 8GB when he's installing.

iron_maiden,

When your installing, try doing a custom install so you can specify your partitions during the install. Probably what is occuring is that Mandrake might be detecting a Windows formatted partition and thinks Windows is still installed there, setting up a dual boot.

During the custom install, you can specify and customize the whole drive to repartition to your needs.

I keep forgetting people tend to hit the default stuff.

You might want to look at the first few of these:

Installation HOWTOs

If I want to erase a drive first, I use Tom's root&boot or a live cd to boot and then command (IDE 1 master for example):

dd if=/dev/zero of=/dev/hda

This will fill the drive with zeros when it has finished, wiping out the last vestiges of the Windows corrupted filesystem.

Then I use fdisk to partition.

fdisk /dev/hda

etc.

# Freeware partitioning software
/dosutils/fips20 on install disk
Ranish Partition Manager
Tom's Root and Boot Floppy has Linux fdisk

# Mandrake links
Mandrake home page
Mandrake Users website
Easy software management: Red Carpet
Maximum RPM
rpmfind
You didn't install the developmental packages? As root, command:
urpmi gcc

Thanks for reply I was checking the drive and they have the rest of the drive has the home directory

as I said it will take time to understand Linux but I am sticking it out it is a great OS .