How do I partition my hard drive? Gparted is being stupid.
 

Okay, I'm a linux newb, fairly literate on computers, but not with that stupid terminal.

Anyway, I read up, got that highly rated GParted, and found it couldn't partition my hard drive, saying there was a file system error I should fix in the drive I want to partition, I searched on that, and very few others have had this problem and only those who have windows on their comp seem to be able to solve it with chkdsk, but the Ubuntu fixer does naff all.

Also, there a NO Ubuntu defraggers out there for easy access, because the attitude of the Linux community is that it doesn't need de-fragging, but to my knowledge, defragging every once in a while on anything does wonders.

I can't comment too much on the GParted issue as I have not spent much time with it. If you could post the exact error message perhaps somebody will recognize it.

But as for the defragmentation, it isn't an "attitude"; Unix filesystems are simply designed much better than FAT32 or NTFS. Fragmentation on Unix filesystems, while not impossible, is minimized to the point that it isn't something you need to worry about. You could use a filesystem for years and it will never go beyond say, 5 - 10% fragmentation. You would never fragment a drive to the point that defragmenting it would give you any real-world benefit; if you did something would have had to have gone horribly wrong along the way.

In fact, some Unix filesystems don't even have any concept of defragmentation or software to perform it, like ReiserFS.

Please post the error message you are getting.

Please post what you are trying to do and why you are trying to do it. You don't sound like you're partitioning a blank drive.

chkdsk is a Windows checker, related to the above what are you doing and where?

There are no defraggers because you don't really need them. Please Google it for more info.

For better help, please don't call it a stupid terminal. It's fine to say you don't know it, it's not fine to insult it. It's like walking into a car dealership and saying you know nothing about the gas-guzzling hybrids. It's a different way to do the same thing and in some cases it's even better, and many people will look at you funny and/or write you off as an ignoramus because of it.

No comment.

Is the drive empty or is there a winblows install on there? If your intention is to dual boot, you can save yourself a lot of heartache by installing winblows first. If you're not going to dual boot why bother partitioning?

It's not an attitude, it's a fact. Google this: "do i need to defrag linux" or this: "why don't i need to defrag linux" and you will see why defragging is not needed.

Linux is already on it, want to dual boot with windows, so I can play games without the unstable WINE workarounds.

The drive is about 100gig, 25 used by linux, I want to make a 10gigish size drive for windows, but gparted says I need to check and fix system file errors on that drive, and thats before I can even get to making the extra space NTFS -something like that-.

check and fix(if possible) file system errors.

And yeah, people have used chkdsk to fix this problem, somehow, but with no windows, I can't do that, but I may have the wrong end of the stick there.

Because NTFS is a prioprietrary format that M$oft refuse to publicly document - so no open source tools can (currently) fix it when it has failures.Seems your knowledge is based on poorly designed filesystems. Except in pathalogical cases defragging has limited benefit for Linux filesystems - although the recently released ext4 has an online defragger. Probably of marginal benefit to most home users.

Hey what's the exact error message?

I just thought there may be a renegade file stopping me from partitioning, I wasn't after system performance with that defrag, so, how would I go about installing windows, a full wipe then Linux second?

Error message = "check filesystem on /dev/sda1 for errors and (if possible) fix them"

So, in other words, the NTFS is at the moment, irrelevant, because I can't even split up the linux drive.

Our posts "crossed" - if you have only Linux filesystems, try "shutdown -f -r now" to force fsck on the next reboot.
I interpreted your first post as an NTFS issue.

Uh, yeah, don't think I haven't tried that?

Also, those reviews all use Gparted, or have windows installed first.

Soooo.. do what it says and check the filesystems. That tool is fsck on Linux. Since you can't possibly be partitioning the drive you're booted from (right? right?), it is safe to just run fsck -y /dev/sda1. Make sure it is umounted too, first.

That would be silly. Wipe, install Windows, install Linux.

What I meant. XD

Deleted - I was distracted whilst typing and everything I wanted to say was covered above.

I find that sentence rather funny. No comment.

Read about fsck. Note that:

1. You should never ever run fsck on drives that are mounted read/write. You will completely break your fs if you do that.
2. You might need to use -f to force fsck to fix your drive(s).

Your knowledge is limited. Read on Linux I/O schedulers and their relation with the fragmentation stuff. Actually defragging a linux fs would be of very little benefit unless your drive is completely full. And, in any case, to defrag a drive you can just move it's contents elsewhere and then move it back.

There have been some attempts to release a defrag tool for ext2, but nothing serious. In ext4 that has changed. I don't know about other fs's because all I use is ext[234].

By the way, you can't partition drives that are mounted, I hope you are not trying to do so. If you need more info, give us more info.