Alright I have a 36gb raptor drive.. I know small, but fast. I resized it so that Windows would have 25gb and Linux 10, anyways I am running outta room on my windows partition, is there anyway i can resize the linux partition to something like 6 gb or something just because linux is taking up like 2gb at the most right now.. norton partition magic won't do it can u do it inside linux or something??

Is the Windows partition FAT32 or NTFS?

You could look for "parted" or "qtparted" to do this. I wasn't lucky with qtparted on this, but I have read these names again and again regarding partitioning tasks. It really SHOULD be able to solve your problem. It might depend on the file system that you choose for linux (ext3 should be no problem).

titopoquito

shareware but claims to resize any partition no matter what OS u're running:
http://www.partition-manager.com/

Very useful info regarding partitions and how to manage them:
http://www.bloke.com/linux/partition/

partition magic you say won't do it, but i know it will....you need to resize your linux partition and then hit apply, it'll then show you with unallocated space...click on your windows partition and resize it to the use max unallocated space...you'll then have to reboot your comp which will take you to dos and it'll do all the work for you....be prepared it can take up to 10 mins....i have very bad luck with qtparted unless i'm just installing a linux system and i only have my windows partitions showing...partition magic is a very, very useful program if you're going to be dual booting with windows...there's also a program called boot magic which comes with partition magic if you don't want to use grub or lilo...if you have any probs let me know and if you have yahoo messenger or teamspeak i'll get on with you and help

From my own experience, PartitionMagic 8 resizes some ext3 partitions, but will not resize others, because it does not recognize the file system for some reason. For example, PM 8 works well with RHL9 and FC1 installed partitions, but will not work on FC2 or FC3 boot/root partitions.

Also, parted will resize ext2, but not ext3. Likewise for QTParted. As far as I can tell, there is no linux/unix/windows utility that can resize a PM8-resistant ext3 partition. Right now, there are two ways to resize these types of partitions: (1) convert them to ext2 and resize or (2) “resize” them by creating new ext3 partitions of the desired sizes and cp everything over to them. EEEEEEEEEHHHHHHHH! (to quote Howard Dean).

Well, I used to have dual boot in the same hard drive (20 Gigb), with Windows98 and Mandrake 9.2.
Then I bought a second hard drive (120 Gb) where I installed Mandrake 10.1 Comm and the old one was given all to Windows.

So, during Mdk install, I used the included tool to resize Windows to take all space. And I am sure it did so.

However, in the reality, Windows can see only 11 G, not the 20 Gb it should. So Now I have a 11 G harddrive instead of the 20 G!!!

Is there a way to recover the lost "ghost" space without reformating the whole thing? Thanks a lot.

Maxei DeVraie

Maxei: If you look at the 20GB drive from Mandrake (i.e., fdisk), is the entire drive an FAT32 partition or is there some blank space?

If it fills the whole drive, what errors do you get when you ask Win98 to check the disk/partition for errors?

If the FAT32 partition was not enlarged, I think you can resize it with parted (vfat), but I have never tried it. It’s just to easy to use PM.

I've got partition magic 8.0 and it resizes my ext3...true youmay have to convert it but give it a shot first...always try easiest route...maxei...either look at qtparted for free space or partition magic for unallocated space...if there is unallocated space magic can put it to whatever partition you want where as qtparted in my experience will not...it'll only let you use that free space a new partition

it says i cannot resize the ext2.. the only thing i can resize is the swap. i haven't gotten that far in configurations, but i don't really wanna waste all that time reinstalling it.. may have 2 ..

Hi guys, thanks for your advices. in BIOS, the hard drive (hdb, or C: with Win98) is recognized as 20 GB, but scandisc shows only 11.4 GB total space. Then Diskdrake shows 18GB, and says the partition is FAT32 (I remember it was converted to this format when I installed Linux; it was a mistake because actually the original format was not FAT32, but the Linux tool did it automatically). With Konqueror, the mount point /mntwin98 shows 10.9 GB total space.

All these numbers are contradictory. At least the BIOS doesnt lie. Do you think that PM will recover that space? Is there any other tool that you recommend? Thanks a lot

Maxei DeVraie

Maxei: As a general rule, PM will do nothing if there are errors in the partition. It’s kind of a safety mechanism. If windows (scandisk) does not report any errors, PM will probably run. So, you could try using PM to resize the partition to a smaller size and then to the full size, but no guarantees as to it fixing anything.

Likewise, you could try to do the same thing from Mandrake with parted (http://www.gnu.org/software/parted/m...no/parted.html) using the resize command, which supports fat32. Parted can be run with options and devices, but it is a little less intimidating to run “parted” and then let it ask for the device and allow you to enter commands from a parted command prompt. My experience with parted is that it will not resize a partition that has a problem.

Other options to fix the underlying problem so that you can use PM or parted include trying dosfsck, which I have never used, and Norton Disk Doctor. FC3 has dosfsck, so I assume Mandrake will too. To find out, just run dosfsck --help.

From Mandrake, first try running: “dosfsck /dev/whatever.....” and see what output you get. If it did not seem to do anything, try “dosfsck -v /dev/whatever...” or “dosfsck -afv /dev/whatever...”, where a = fix things automatically (may be a bad idea), f = convert lost clusters to files (sound familiar?) and v = verbose. Maybe you should try using the options in the order (1) no options, (2) -v, (3) -fv and (4) -afv.

As for Norton, if you already have or know someone who has any version of Norton Utilities or Norton SystemWorks, you can run Norton DiskDoctor (NDD) from the installation CD and try fixing the problem that way. NDD is a very robust utility. It’s fairly safe to let NDD fix problems automatically.

Good luck!

Thanks a lot WhatsHisName, I will try the Norton utilities (when I get a copy of it). I think is useless to try fto repair from Linux: If Diskdrake (the tool used in Mandrake) could not do it before, it never will (actually, this problem is the fault of Diskdrake IMO). So, the option is to resize from within Windows (Im worried to render useless Windows98 and dont want to repeat installs argh!!

Thanks again.
Maxei DeVraie