Hi all. I'm tryin to setup my partitions for Redhat9 and during installation redhat said "Cannot allocation partition tables." Redhat said it can fix this problem though but it would result in loss of all information off of /dev/hda. I was wondering 2 things.

1. Can I setup the partitions some other way? Partition magic gives me the same problem, auto partition from redhat doesnt work, and disk druid gives me that error above.

2. Can I find out which hard drive is /dev/hda/ from Windows XP or anywhere else? I don't want to accidentally erase my storage partition thinking that it's my windows partition.

Thanks for your help.

hda would be your first hard drive. If you have a second hard drive it would be hdb. I also use both Red Hat 9 and Partition Magic. I am not sure if I understand how you currently have your system configured. Most new computers usually come configured with just one partition all of which is set aside for Windows. When you run Partition Magic does it just show one partition? Does it show any free space which is unallocated? Also does it say that you have just one hard drive?

If there is not any free space then you would need to reduce the size of the Windows partition to create some free space. Once you have some free space you can then create one or more partitions for Linux. Or if you do not want to alter your Windows partition you could add a second hard drive and put Linux on that.

I have resized partitions of various types using Partition Magic although I do not have any experience with Windows XP. On my computer I have only used Windows 2K, Windows ME, PC DOS 2000 and several versions of Linux. I have resized patitions with Windows ME and Windows 2K so I assume it would also be OK to resize a Windows XP partition. By the way, how big is your hard disk?

From what I know, linux devices are listed as follows:

/dev/hda = Master device on Primary IDE channel (IDE0);
/dev/hdb = Slave device on Primary IDE channel (IDE0);
/dev/hdc = Master device on Secondary IDE channel (IDE1);
/dev/hdd = Slave device on Secondary IDE channel (IDE1).

If you are (as you say) using WinXP then I would strongly discourage using any linux partitioning utility UNLESS you are installing on: 1) empty partition(s) which you have already made available, OR 2) a drive which you wish to dedicate totally to linux (thus leaving WinXP alone on another drive).

The reason for this is the NTFS file system which you may (or may not) be running. Partition Magic is a good way to (relatively) safely resize NTFS (or FAT) partitions to ensure that you don't lose data.


Well, how many hard drives are in your system? If you only have one, chances are it is /dev/hda. If this is the drive you want to install to, you will need to allocate space for it (this can be done by Partition Magic...I'm unfamiliar with the errors you say PM is throwing you). The most important bit of information you can provide is how your system is set up. That is, how many hard drives do you have? How are they partitioned? How many CDROM drives to you have? When you are running the RH install, what devices does it give you the option of installing to (assuming you've just got IDE devices, it will only list the hard drives as /dev/hdX). How many devices does it present to you? /dev/hda, /dev/hdb, /dev/hdc, /dev/hdd?

No problem as for the help (if I've been any). I've currently got five OSs (XP, 98, Deb, Slack 9.0 and Slack 9.1) booting off of two hard drives.

Just trying to figure out what your situation is so we can offer more definitive help.

Cheers,
Bob