Hi! I decided to give Linux a try and installed SuSE 9.2. But as it happens there was not enough disk space on my disk and it stops working. So I deleted Linux partitions to reinstall it.

Now I have 80 Gb hard drive with 3 WinXP drives (NTFS): C - 10Gb, D - 35Gb and E - 35Gb. On C now I have 2+Gb space where was Linux and 7+ used by WinXP.

What I want is the following:

1. Merge 2+ Gb with the rest of disk C to use with WinXP
2. Take 5Gb from disk D to create a partition for Linux.
3. Install there SuSE.

I do not want to format disk or do it from scratch. Ive got a lot of data on the disk. I will of course back up important data.

I cannot use Partition Magic since it give me 117 error and there is no way known by me to get rid of it. QTparted works ok, but I have no idea how to use it.

How anybody either give me a simple step-by-step instruction how to do it or point to an existing one. I would really appreciate it.

One more question: should I convert NTFS to FAT32 or I can use NTFS under Linux.

Cheers....

When I last heard about it, Linux NTFS write support was still experimental.

PartitionMagic is probably quitting on you because you installed Windows SP2?

According to its website, QTParted can only resize NTFS partitions, not FAT32 ones.

Windows doesn't like ext3 or reiser partitions, so put them in a dark corner where it can't see, i.e. at the end of your disk, after E:\ (or whatever you have left after partitioning).

HTH,

Samsara

PS: External USB or firewire hard drives are really nice to get you through tight spots like this one (referring to keeping your data safe)! Worthwhile investment, methinks.

Thanks Samsara for your comments. Yes I did install Windows SP2, which I actually regret, since apart from stupid security measures, which I achieve by other means, it does not add anything new and useful. I wonder if I can uninstall it?

Another idea, I've still got my old 8Gb Fujitsu HD, which is quite slow but I can use it for Linux I guess. But I would prefer not to have a second HD, but re-organise my current one. The main idea is to get some space from C and D to create a Linix logical drive of say 5Gb. But I do not want to loose my data. So any advice is welcome.

You can. The way I did it was to first revert my system to the pre-installation state using the Utility in Accessories, then uninstall it using the "Add/remove programs" utility in the Settings menu/browser. That should pretty much eliminate any trace of SP2 from your system.

Probably best to uninstall and re-install PartitionMagic. You should then be able to do all the partitioning you need to create that linux partition at the end of your disk.

Good luck!

Samsara

I'm still using my 'old' win98 next to my linux(es) and partition magic comes up with problems avery time I start it. Anyway, if you can work with Partition Magic than Qtparted is easy: it's basically a PM clone. As an advantage it doesn't require reboots to 'finish operations in MS-DOS' or any of those typical windows behaviours.

I've got a SystemRecoveryCD with QTparted, but I am not sure how to use it. I did not find any docs on its website...

It's probably a live-cd

Put it into your cd-drive and reboot your system. During startup you'll see an option to enter the bios (you'll have to press "F2", "esc" or "del") where you'll have to select cd-rom as first boot device. Save & exit. Now your box should boot from the rescue-cd in your cd-rom drive.

Once you're there, there are two possibilities. You either boot into text mode (like in slack-live and see a screen with some instructions as to possible actions, one might be to type 'qtprted' or similar to start the tool. The second possibility is you're in a graphical environment and you'll have to look for qtparted in the usual apps menu.

qtparted is gui-only. parted is the name of the program that can be run from the command line.

Remember to refer to this table to see what qtparted can and can't do:
http://qtparted.sourceforge.net/features.en.html

Regards,

Samsara

thanks Samsara

So I resized my 10Gb disk, dividing it into 2 equal parts: one has WinXP and another is planned for Linux. But I overshot a bit. I need 6Gb for WinXP and 4Gb for Linux. How can I take 1Gb from an empty partition to add to WinXP partition?

delete the empty partition. then resize XP partition and create new empty partitin.

thanks to everyone - I have sort it out and have my SuSE running on 4.5Gb. The main problem is still lack of Internet connection - it seems utterly impossible to configure it . Will create a topic about it...