partition question

stonecrest · 09-20-2004, 07:01 PM

I'm trying to use qtparted to create a partition.. I have a dual-boot machine with Fedora Core 2 and WinXP and I'd like to create a "shared" partition that both can read/write (I assume I want it to be FAT32?).

My disk in qtparted looks like this:

Code:

/dev/hda-1   free 0.03 MB
/dev/hda1    ntfs 11.72 GB
/dev/hda-1   free 14.23 GB
/dev/hda2    ext3 99.42MB
/dev/hda3    ext3 9.34GB
/dev/hda4    extended 1.87GB
  /dev/hda-1 free 0.03MB
  /dev/hda5  linux-swap 1.87GB

So I'm trying to create the partition out of the 14GB of free space that I made. But qtparted says that I can't create another primary partition and creating an extended partition is disabled (the box is grayed out). What am I supposed to do? I don't understand how partitioning works very well..

Thanks in advance for any help!

Scott

Tinkster · 09-20-2004, 07:19 PM

What output do you get from
fdisk -l
?

Cheers,
Tink

leonscape · 09-20-2004, 07:28 PM

You've used up all four primary partitions, and creating an extended partition requires a free primary as well.

Unless you've got somewhere you can move info of this disk ( or its got nothing on it already ) its going to require a lot of messing about.

You'd need to change things like this

Code:

/dev/hda-1   free 0.03 MB
/dev/hda1    ntfs 11.72 GB
/dev/hda2    vfat 14.23 GB
/dev/hda3   extended 11.31GB
  /dev/hda5  ext3 99.42MB
  /dev/hda6  ext3 9.34GB
  /dev/hda-1 free 0.03MB
  /dev/hda7  linux-swap 1.87GB

stonecrest · 09-20-2004, 09:30 PM

Code:

$ /sbin/fdisk -l
Cannot open /dev/hda

I'm not sure why I get that?? Anyway, I didn't realize that creating an extended partition requires a free primary, I thought I could make one more. Damnit.

leonscape, you say that I can transform my partition table into that without moving info off the disk (although it would take a lot of messing around). How would I go about doing that though?

I appreciate both of your responses, thanks a lot.

Scott

stonecrest · 09-20-2004, 10:26 PM

Actually.. I wouldn't particularly mind merging this free space into my current linux partition (/dev/hda3). Would that be easier to do??

iamacomma · 09-21-2004, 09:00 AM

Quote:

Originally posted by stonecrest
... without moving info off the disk (although it would take a lot of messing around). How would I go about doing that though? ...

Scott

You would need to empty a partition by moving files from that partition to whatever free space you could find on the others. If you can't find enough free space to move everything, you'll either have to start deleting or move files off the disk.

Depending on where the partitions are laid out, you could move all the files from your linux partition, delete it, and then create a new, larger partition. Then hunt down all the files you moved around and put them back where they belong.