hello, i just installed redhat 7.2 and i've got these partitions:

/WinMe/C 5gig My windows C drive
/WinMe/D 16gig Supposed to be my windows D drive
/ 6gig
/boot 80meg
/home 1gig
swap 320meg

the /WinMe/D was supposed to be vfat, which i think means that it should be a windows partition, but when i go into windows it isn't visible, infact i think it has been made into a linux partition.

how do i change it to be a windows drive, or do i have to re-install??

thank you

Post the output of the command (as root):

fdisk /dev/hdX -l

Replace the X with where your D drive is installed.
IDE1 master=/dev/hda
IDE1 slave=/dev/hdb
IDE2 master=/dev/hdc
IDE2 slave=/dev/hdd

Disk /dev/hda: 240 heads, 63 sectors, 3876 cylinders
Units = cylinders of 15120 * 512 bytes

Device Boot Start End Blocks Id System
/dev/hda1 * 1 678 5125648+ b Win95 FAT32
/dev/hda2 679 689 83160 83 Linux
/dev/hda3 690 2883 16586640 83 Linux
/dev/hda4 2884 3876 7507080 f Win95 Ext'd (LBA)
/dev/hda5 2884 3696 6146248+ 83 Linux
/dev/hda6 3697 3831 1020568+ 83 Linux
/dev/hda7 3832 3876 340168+ 82 Linux swap

Do you have just one physical drive?

If so, you used the D partition in your Linux install and you have formatted it, so that partion is no longer available for Windows.

You now have one fat32 (Windows) partition, 4 Linux partitions and a Linux swap partition.

Use this command to find out the size of each partition in human readable terms:

df -h

ok, i think hd3 was supposed to be my windows d drive and it is formatted with a linux file system right? can i now correct my mistake and change it to a windows file system OR do i have to re-install??

hda3 you mean?

Post /etc/fstab so I can tell what you have used that partition for.

If you haven't used it for something else it will be easy. If you have used it in the Linux system, we will have to move some stuff and possibly change some links and stuff.

I use the Ranish Partition Manager to create fat32 partitions as the Linux windows format command is limited to something like a 2 gig partition.

LABEL=/ / ext3 defaults 1 1
/dev/hda1 /WinME/C vfat defaults 0 0
LABEL=/WinME/D /WinME/D ext3 defaults 1 2
LABEL=/boot /boot ext3 defaults 1 2
none /dev/pts devpts gid=5,mode=620 0 0
LABEL=/home /home ext3 defaults 1 2
none /proc proc defaults 0 0
none /dev/shm tmpfs defaults 0 0
/dev/hda7 swap swap defaults 0 0
/dev/cdrom /mnt/cdrom iso9660 noauto,owner,kudzu,ro 0 0
/dev/fd0 /mnt/floppy auto noauto,owner,kudzu 0 0

if i go in the /WinME/D directory and do "ls" all that is there is lost+found directory which itself is emtpy

I hate that label crap that Redhat does that hides the partitions. Does df-h show /dev/hda3 to be 16 gig? Or does gtop show it that size?

If that is the correct partition and if it is empty, you can use the Ranish Partition Manager to re-format as fat32 and change your fstab entry to:

/dev/hda3 /WinME/D vfat defaults 0 0

sorry, how do i use the ranish partition manager, do i need to download it?

yeah df - h shows hda3 to be 16gig

Download the Ranish Partition Manager and put it on a Windows bootable floppy.

It might can be run from Windows directly, but I can't remember as I used it a couple of years ago to fix a friends computer. I used the bootable floppy.

Why not use fdisk that is already installed most likely on your system to reset the partition in question. Set it as a DOS type partition then just boot into Windows. From there you should be able to format it as you wish. No need to download any additional software.

I never could get Linux fdisk to make a windows partition over 2 gig. His partition is 16 gig and Ranish is much easier to use than the Windows fdisk IMHO.

But because you couldn't get it to work doesn't mean it doesn't work. From the man page I believe it supports up to 2TB. Oh well.. it was just a suggestion.

From man fdisk:
There are several *fdisk programs around. Each has its problems and strengths. Try them in the order cfdisk, fdisk,
sfdisk. (Indeed, cfdisk is a beautiful program that has strict requirements on the partition tables it accepts, and
produces high quality partition tables. Use it if you can. fdisk is a buggy program that does fuzzy things - usually
it happens to produce reasonable results. Its single advantage is that it has some support for BSD disk labels and
other non-DOS partition tables. Avoid it if you can. sfdisk is for hackers only - the user interface is terrible, but
it is more correct than fdisk and more powerful than both fdisk and cfdisk. Moreover, it can be used noninterac-
tively.)