RedHat 9 Partition Questions
 

I just installed RedHat 9 on my primary hdd which contained Windows XP. Now, it seems to not have removed the Windows XP partition during boot-up because it's now dual booted.

Now, I want to completely remove Windows XP and move purely to a RedHat 9 OS. How can I do this? It doesn't seem that the RedHat 9 installation can see NTFS which Windows XP is currently at.

How can I completely remove the Windows XP partition during the RedHat 9 installation so that it would be RedHat 9 OS only? I also want to have a separate partition to store my other files (mp3, graphics, divx, etc.). How can having another partition be accomplished? Is it performed during the RedHat 9 installation or after? Is it automounted already?

The problem is going to be that you can't, at least to my knowledge, make Redhat take up the whole drive because you have already set it the starting point is. If you are going to have another partition for other files what you could do is when you get to the point where you are partitioning, delete the windows partition and in its place formate that space in EXT3 or ResierFS. As for mounting it Redhat should just creat a little icon on your desktop and have it has a device in your /mnt directory. If it isn't you can just put in mount /dev/hdd1 /mnt/hdda1 where /dev/hda1 is your first partition name and you can name it whatever you want in the /mnt directory.

.......

What?

sorry but I did not get it just now.
Yeah darin3200 thank you the information is also useful for me.:)
But it is still impossible to remove the windows partition at the Bootload starting?

Qu Chen

Delete the NTFS/FAT windows partition with fdisk in linux.
Then recreate the partition using fdisk and create a filesystem on it with mkfs -t ext3 /dev/whatever the new drive is..

You can add the new entry into /etc/fstab and it will automount it..
Remember to create a new mount point for the new space.
Then edit /etc/grub.conf and remove the windows listings or just # remark it out..

This will reflect a change in /boot/grubgrub.conf and you will be straight...

Did i miss anything?

When Linux installs itself, if you chose to auto-install I'm assuming....it just looked for unformatted,unpartitioned disk space before it installed itself there...left your windows area alone. I say you start from scratch again since you seem to want a separate drive for mp3s, etc.....

What you should do is fdisk in DOS(you'll need fdisk.exe....I can send it to you if you'd like)....Remove all the partitions....After this, create a primary partition and and then create an extended partition. For the primary partition, allocate how much space you want for your separate drive. Now, Reinstall Redhat 9 and choose auto-installation..and it'll install itself in the section in memory not even used yet.. I'm assuming you just want two drives..and giving you the setup with this. If you want more, it is a very similar setup. Just create the primary partition, and extended partition...how many ever logical partitions you want in that extended partition..and leave enough unpartitioned, unformatted space for linux to install itself. If you partition everything and try to auto-install, it will give you an error. However, you can also manually install, but I find this easier for your application. If you have any more questions, or what I said maybe seemed to miss what you were wanting to do, let me know. I left a link that explains primary, extended, and logical partitions if you did not already know(this is where I learned it). Good luck.

-Keerthan

http://www.redhat.com/docs/manuals/l...artitions.html

A really easy way is if you've got Partition Magic or can get hold of it for windows, fire that up , delete your windows partition, redistribute the space to your linux partitions press the button and watch as windows self destructs itself next time you reboots windows. I've did that a couple of times on systems and it resizes/redistributes the space no problem. ext2 ext3

Hi, looking_lost. do you mean you Partition magic can do the job? (how about my demon version?)
My condition is : I have dualboot system, redhat 8.0 and windows XP. now I want to resize windows partition and give more space to redhat. does partition magic work here?

Thanks

It's always worked for me although I've see posts about people coming to grief so it's a case if at your own risk which I don't mind doing on my own gear in the interests of research :) hence the reference to fdisk underneath my name.

You have to really read what's to be done and I don't know about how limited the demo is.

thanks

The best part of partition magic is the dos version, if u make it all read-only it never runs out. It will also make ext2 and swap disks without any probs.

Yeh but you have to do that in windows don't you. I personally love Mandrake 9.1 partitioning ability. I use it all the time because it has a ton of features and you can resize partitions. Not to mention if you turn expert mode on there are at least 50 if not 100 different types of filesystem you can format to.

Hi JC404

To completely remove Win XP from your drive simply put in your Red Hat 9 first cd, set your BIOS to boot from the cd rom drive and boot up - you''ll eventually come to a partitioning screen were it will give you the option to delete all existing partitions on the system - simply choose it - the Red Hat installer will simply delete all exisintg partitions then install Red Hat 9 across your whole drive - then simply manully edit what partitions Red Hat has created - by default it will create a boot, root and swap partition - simply resize the root partition and set a mount point up in the space for your home partition - youll then be able to use this for your movies and stuff.

Good luck

Thanks for the help. I made /boot, /root, /usr, /home, /swap in separate partitions during the installation.

The /home is now allocated for my files. I think it now has around 60+gb of space out of 80gb. Is it possible to format/erase the /boot, /root, /usr, /swap without touching the /home if ever something happens that needs to remove RedHat 9?

Transferring files off cds is long and tedious. I got used to formatting WindowsXP by creating another partition in the hard disk.

I can't also get the free and filled space off these partitions. It doesn't appear when I look at the properties of these folders. How can I check for the disk space?