Hi There

My computer currently has one 4.3Gb hard drive in which I have a dual-boot Win98 partition and SuSe 9.0 partition, and a blank 8.4Gb hard drive in FAT32 format.

However, I recieved a copy of Mandrake 10.0 Community from Linux Format, and I require help.

How Can I:

1)Delete the Suse 9.0 partition and give the space back to my Win 98 partition

2)Install Mandrake on my second hard drive

3)Not bugger my system in the process

Thanks for help

Redwolf_Eddy

Deleting the space is not the problem but resizing windows.

If you have partition magic or something like that it is very simple. It can be done from windows.

If you don't have that and don't bother to have your windows on 2 partitions, the simple way is:

Take your windows boot disk and start up.
use fdisk to delete the suse partition.
Restart.
Start again with your bootdisk.
Make a new win32 partition (fdisk can't make another OS)
Restart with your bootdisk and format the new partition.
Now you have 2 partitions on your first drive which can be accessed by windows. But you still have the Suse mbr. Start up with the bootdisk,
start fdisk/mbr and the windows mbr is placed back.

After that you can install mandrake on the second drive. It will probably replace your master boot record, but then you will have access to win and mandrake.

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If you know knoppix you can do the following:

Start up with your windows bootdisk.
Make a partition on your second drive with fdisk and format it.
(You may have to boot with the disk before formatting)

Start Knoppix from CD.
Copy everything from the windows drive (C) to the new drive.

Start up with your bootdisk.
Use fdisk to delete all partitions on your first drive.
Make one partition for the whole drive and format it.

Start knoppix again.
Copy everything back to the C drive.

Startup the bootdisk
fdisk /mbr puts back your windows master boot record.
Try if it works. If things are all right shut down.

Start up with your windows bootdisk.
Delete the partition on your new drive.
Shut down.

If you start up with mandrake, it finds a clean new drive and will be happy to install.

CloudBuilder

Great tool for resizing partitions: BootITNG from terabyteunlimited. Defrag Windows first, to maximize the amount of contiguous free space, then use BootIT to resize the partition. Standard disclaimer: backup any important data first. -- J.W.

But there is really no reason to do this, if you use Mandrake. If you use DiskDrake - http://www.mandrakelinux.com/diskdrake/ - you can resize and reshape as you like...
In this case, the Windows partition would be left untouched; the SuSe partition could be made NTFS or FAT32 - I am not entirely sure about ADDING it to the Windows partition, but Windows would be able to see it, read it and write to it. It is always best to have a separate storage partition, anyway, in case Windows kicks it and you have to install anew without losing your downloads, docs and other stuff - and the remaining space (your separate disk) can then be used to setup your new Mandy partition & it's Swap. DiskDrake kicks in whenever you install Mandrake - to ask you where to put the system.

Thanks a lot for the help all