Creating A Partition
 

I have a disk space of 8gb which is unformatted... After I installed FC2, I have left 8 gb free space to create partititon after the installation via windows partition magic... However it failed because there weren't any drive letters etc... When I fdisk -l it says

So, I want to use that free space with XP (Fat32).... How can I format this free space with fdisk or any other method?

THanks a lot!

Assuming this space is on your first hard drive, use "fdisk /dev/hda" or (perhaps easier) cfdisk "/dev/hda" to create a new partition, and then mkfs -t vfat /dev/<your new partition> will format it. Be careful with this commands, since you can hose your existing partition if you're not careful.

You first will need to create another partition in
that "free space" (which in fact is an extended
partition with one logical partition for Linux in it).

Cylinders 2551-3648 are empty. Once you have
created that logical partition you can format it
from either WinDOHs or from Linux.
man mkdosfs for details


Cheers,
Tink

Ok... I don't want to lose any data, I have read tons of docs around the WWW so I don't want to make a small mistake which will waste my time in the future :) When I try to create a partition it says first cyclinder(2551-3648, default 2551)... Should I write 2551 or 2552? Maybe this could seem funny for you but I am very confused.. Because the table shows that 1785 then 1786... What should I do? Thanks =)

What to say :)

My personal experience with fdisk is good, it
never failed me in -what, 7 years?- and I'd
trust its judgement when it comes to where the
partition boundaries are. But that, of course, is
not a warranty of any kind that it will work for
you. ;)


Cheers,
Tink

so 2551 or 2552? =)

Since you said that you're going to use that free space with WinXP why not just use the disk management application in the Administrative tools section?

the reason why I don't use administrative tools is that it doesn't work! It gives an error... So I have to try fdisk!