Best partitioning software

Completely Clueless · 12-04-2008, 08:57 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by ninja master

i somewhat agree with the opinion, only i would give vista its bare minimum space, make the rest ext3 and install ext drivers so vista can access the linux partitions.

Yes, it's valid advice and it was the same approach I had tried myself at the outset. However, upon attemting to make the system backup disk, Vista crashed - and crashed repeatedly. As I stated elsewhere, Acronis True Image also threw-up at the presence of Vista. There were some other problems with Gate's latest masterpiece which I decided I couln't live with and that it simply wasn't worth saving, so I overwrote both the Vista partitions with Zeros and merged them, then resized the result. Now Vista has the 'bare minimum space' that it *truly* deserves: 0 bytes.

As for the boot problem, it was a fault with the loader. I'll fix it later by doing a grub-install from a Knoppix DVD. Never known it fail.

ninja master · 12-07-2008, 02:51 PM

"Gate's latest masterpiece" LOL i have to deal with the latest masterpiece, because my parents refuse to switch. i absolutely hate the new IE. it has gone from bad to worse. i still keep an old windows 2000 machine around to play video games yet, but wine is almost to the point where i can scrap that.

Electro · 12-07-2008, 03:26 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Completely Clueless

Hi guys,

I bought a new Acer Aspire AMD64 2-core desktop the other day and it had Windoze Vista Basic Home pre-installed on it and this has caused me a great deal of trouble as it renders Partition Magic useless. I've noticed before that Windows OS/s often behave like uneradicable viruses and Vista is proving no exception. It's really buggered up the hard drive. I wish more manufactuers would give us the 'no Operating System' option when purchasing new hardware.

Anyway, what I want to do is totally reformat the entire drive, removing the three partitions the 'geniuses' who pre-installed 'doze created. As I said I am unable to use Norton Partition Magic because the presence of a Vista volume on the HDD causes it to crash. So I've tried GParted and QTParted, but neither of them seem to be able to convert unallocated space into ext3. I'm not sure if this is a fundamental flaw in Parted or simply a bug in the two GUIs., but whatever it is, clicking on the unallocated space (over 200GB) just reveals a list of greyed-out unavailable options.

Question 1. Is this a known problem with QTParted and GParted?

Question 2. What is the best program for re-partitioning HDDs in Linux?

Question 3. Does my best immediate option lie with fdisk, cfdisk or something else altogether?

THanks!

I know you got it worked out, but I think for question 1 it is mainly a user related problem. I have not have any problems with Gparted resizing my Vista partition on my Dell Inspiron 1520. After using Gparted, my notebook had no problems booting to Dell's utilities.

Any program commercial or freeware is not the best. I would say that open source programs such as Gparted is the most useful because it supports the most file systems.

You already answer question 3. The developers for fdisk recommends to use cfdisk first when creating partitions. Sometimes fdisk does not do things correct or it may find partitions incorrectly.

Slackware is compiled to run on 80486 and up. Sabayon Linux is good, but I recommend its full edition because its mini-edition is known to have problems. Also with Sabayon Linux can also be used straight from the disc with out installation.

I found installing Linux or running Linux from a disc it is best to boot from cold boot when using notebook computers. Some notebook computers may need additional kernel parameters at the boot line to boot up correctly in Linux.

AMD processors are forgiving if you pick a distribution that is compiled on a lower 80x86 model.

hasanatizaz · 12-08-2008, 12:38 AM

gparted is kind of accurate when you define the size while fdisk is not as accurate as gparted but i love fdisk because of its simplicity and obviously very easy to use.

ninja master · 12-09-2008, 04:49 AM

cfdisk ftw. i stand by it to the end. simple, and effective. i bet gpartd has a pretty gui, im just too familiar with cf disk to use anything else right now.

Completely Clueless · 12-09-2008, 02:22 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by ninja master

cfdisk ftw. i stand by it to the end. simple, and effective. i bet gpartd has a pretty gui, im just too familiar with cf disk to use anything else right now.

I'm very much inclined to agree. It takes minimal familiarization with and once you get the hang of it you can set out and write to disk a whole complex partition structure within a few minutes. It doesn't get much better than that. Of course, you have to know the difference between logical, primary and extended partitions, various filesystems and similar other stuff, and how to combine it all effectively, but that's kind of expected at this level anyway. Cfdisk is a GREAT tool to have around.

ninja master · 12-10-2008, 10:41 AM

yup, before i even used linux daily, i became a big cfdisk fan. it was simply way over powered compared to the dos "fdisk" utility.

masinick · 12-10-2008, 01:19 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by ninja master

yup, before i even used linux daily, i became a big cfdisk fan. it was simply way over powered compared to the dos "fdisk" utility.

cfdisk indeed does a great job. I find that using gparted works fine, but it takes WAY longer - quite a while just to recognize what is on the disk and what the layout is, then present the appearance and the size information in the display. While I have not found it to misbehave, you can do things a lot faster with cfdisk, and it has withstood the tests of time and simply works.

The sidux manual, available online at http://manual.sidux.com/en/part-cfdisk-en.htm, does a great job of documenting the features of cfdisk.

ninja master · 12-25-2008, 04:12 AM

im curious where can i find this gparted?

Junior Hacker · 12-25-2008, 04:48 AM

In Google....

Completely Clueless · 03-20-2009, 05:49 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Junior Hacker

In Google....

The best procedure I have found to date is to partition the disk with cfdisk, then format the new partitions with gparted. This seems to produce the best results. Both cfdisk and gparted are included as standard with most Linux live CDs.