Hi,
I have a laptop with a dual boot Windows XP and Red Hat 9, using grubber.
Partitions are like this:
/dev/hda1 - /windowze: fat 16
/dev/hda2 - /boot: ext3
/dev/hda3- /: ext3
.... etc

I want to drop windows from my hard disk, and I am unsure if I will mess with linux in the process. If I format /dev/hda1 with ext3 will I screw up boot sector and grubber ?
What is the best procedure to do this ?

Thanks and best regards,
MB

from wath i know the bios on laptops is on the harddrive. You could erase your bios in the process and you will have to get the floppys from the manufacturer to put the bios back.
My advice is to look at your laptop manufacturer site to be sure.

... And you have winxp on fat16?

Well, you can safely format the hda1 without any worry as the MBR is not in hda1. Also, you can convert it into ext3, or even raiserFS. Finally, don't forget to change your /etc/fstab file to be update with your new settings.

Thanks for the quick answer.

UltimaGuy: just for check - I use fdisk to change partition type to linux, and then use mkfs to make (format) ext3 filesystem and then change /etc/fstab with new partition info, right ?

cristi1979: my laptop does'nt have bios on hd, but thanks for the advise. About win xp on fat 16, after the installation process I had the same thought you had, after cheking fdisk. But I simply formated /dev/hda1 during win xp setup using fat (that I suppose its fat32 ). Then on red hat setup, disk druid probably identified /dev/hda1 as fat16. Since I installed windowze on a temporary basis, and I could mount it with read/write as msdos, I didn't worried about it.

thanks and best regards,
MB

that makes no sense whatsoever. bios is a chip on the mobo, not on the hard drive. the reason it makes no sense is because the hard drive needs a device driver to work. and on top of that, every hard drive crash would mean a new bios was needed and i know of no hard drives that come with a bios on them.

if i'm wrong, please point me to where this information can be found.


but yea:

fdisk, change the type and use

#mke2fs -j /dev/hda1

that will format the drive as ext3 (if you leave off -j it will be ext2)

i forgot the actual fdisk commands but i think you'd do somethign along the lines of:

#fdisk /dev/hda

and use the commands "t" to change the type and "w" to write the changes to the MBR.

check for a bootable partition also "p" will list the current configuration. if /dev/hda1 has a * by it, then you'll have to possible setup a boot partition and install grub or lilo.

the gentoo install docs explain this stff nicely

http://www.gentoo.org/doc/en/gentoo-x86-install.xml

fdisk part is closer to the beginning of the install and the grub lilo stuff is closer to the end of the install. it goes over how to use fdisk but dont delte your partiions, just look for the part where they check for bootable partitions and changing the type. "t"

>that makes no sense whatsoever. bios is a chip on the mobo, not on the hard drive.

The bios proper, yes. However, you'd be amazed at the random crap that laptop manufacturers shove on the hard drives. I maintain one that has a couple of tiny partitions before the others which I'd never dare touch.

My take on the poster's issue is that there won't be anything important in /dev/hda1, go ahead and nuke it.

i seen some compaq desktops who had the bios (the software) on a partition. You could'n change the drive. To use the computer after you changed the hdd you would have to get the floppys which came with the computer to boot and write the bios software in the new harddrive.