I'm on a PII/400MHz system. I have one physical harddrive, partitioned so:

C: FAT32 5GB Windows 2000 Installation
D: FAT32 23GB My Junk

I defrag'd and scandisk'd my D drive before installing Linux. I must say, Mandrake 9 is veeeeeeeeery impressive

My problem is this: Mandrake 9, when I pick "resize an existing windows partition" or even "make a new partition on your windows drive", the scrollbar thingy drops from my current size of 23gb to a minimum of 21gb. That's only 2 GB! There's no way I can install everything I need with this...!

Why won't it let me partition more space? It IS empty space--I have something like 8GB free on my D drive.

I neeeeeeeed more space..and I couldn't find a free partitioning program, and I'm too poor to buy Partition Magic

Anyone know how to fix this?

If D is purely your junk change the attributes of your files recursively to make sure none are makred hidden or system or read-only or anything and then defrag repeatedly. Since DOS, Microsoft's defraggers have sucked so you probably need to do it more than once. If you have any spare space on C, move some stuff from D to C temporarily.

You still may not get all your empty space available. I noticed Mandrake was cautious with my C drive but I just wrote that down to "immovable system files" in the C drive. It did slice out about 6 of 20 gigs which is about what I was expecting.

And, of course, you gotta slide the scrollbar thingy as far left as you want.

Hmm, I'll try all that.

Problem is, the defrag shows solid blue, then a big white chunk, then a bunch of system files all at the end of the partition.

I'll defrag again, but I doubt it'll help. I do slide the mandrake bar all the way to the end, but it only lets me take 3gb. Maybe there's a way to manually repartition it?

I'll try defragging again multiple times, thanks!

How rare.

Defragging multiple times doesn't help.
I need to somehow re-partition my drive to add 3gb from my D drive to the 3gb freed up already. Maybe I can repartition using the Redhat installer or something?