Well I'm very interested in using Linux, and so chose Mandriva to be a distro for me to use. My friend told me when it comes to DiskDrake in the install, goto Custom Partitioning, then do Auto Allocate to automatically do the partitioning stuff for me and hopefully correctly. Though first time I was told by DiskDrake there was not enough space to Auto Allocate, so I defragged like my friend advised me to, yet I still get the same message.

Anyway to fix this and lemme do the Auto Allocate or would I have to resize the windows partition? :S

Thanks,
// Pekay


P.S. If I would have to resize the windows partition, I just hope theres a wa to not lose data but I doubt .

Nvm............ =)

No one?

Nice conversation, I once did this kind of thing with a friend in a pub, It would start by one of us saying, "yeah!" then the other would say something like, "I Know".
We would go on for 5 or 10 minutes, laughing our heads off, attracting the attention of ladies near by, and so on........

But seriously, yes you'd hve to resize it.

Not much info to go on in you post, Just what size is your HD, and the window$ partition, and how much space do you think you'll need for Mandrake.

QtParted allows you to see the partition and the data is shaded a different colour, that gives a better idea of just how much space there is.

Perhaps there is a need to know how much space is required for an install.

Cheers,

Partition Magic for Windows can safely resize Windows partitions


definetly a simple problem for you to fix

here is where your problem is,
If you can defragment the spare HardDrive space you cannot use use autoallocate. Autoallocate only works when there is space on the Harddrive that isnt usable in windows, (no partition).
Mandriva recommends at least 4gig for autoallocate+Graphical System.

i'm guessing disk drake shows you a picture bar that is completely Blue?
blue represents Windows Partition.
You need a big chunk that is coloured grey (unallocated)
you need to shrink it from windows or plain delete it from Diskdrake.



A harddrive is like a cake
you can leave it whole,
or cut it into pieces as big or as small as you like (partitions)
,
place a strawberry on the one you want to claim as yours (if windows claims (formats it) it is blue)

xD...

Apparently QtParted doesn't work with Linux, so what could I do with that ;P.

Indeed.

Yup, well my friend said defrag the windows partition and auto allocate should allocate partitions there. To be honest I have only just learned what partitioning is and how it works (i think ).

Hehe, well putting it that way, does help understanding . Thanks for your help.

//Pekay

lets just leave post as a side affect of diseire for food :P

Use the partition program from windows, just try to reduce the size of the windows partition,(the active partition) removing the amount you want for linux from windows.

then restart your mandrake install and try auto allocate again.

It's very simple, much simpler than you have seen so far.

First you must defragment in Windows.

When you repartition it is like dividing a room by putting up stud walls - youve got to move the furniture out of the way first!

When you defragment it moves all your XP stuff to one end of the disk, leaving space for the new partitions.

After defragmenting restart your computer with the Mandriva disk in place. Mandriva repartitions very very well.

When Mandrive gets to the partitioning stage, it will offer options including using space in your windows partition. This is the space cleared by defragmenting.

You may also need to clear data, music, movies etc to cd's or dvd's to make space depending on what space you have. Mandrake will run very well on 4gbs but that doesn't give you much space for stuff!

i dont know what windows defragmenter you use but the windows NT 5.1 (xp 2000) just match file fragments for files together no matter where on the disk they are.

Result defragmented files all over the disk and highly fragmented freespace. (aka files at start middle and end of partition,
leaving no way to resize without 3rd party defrag tool.)

I am sorry. I have no experience of NT and assumed it could be de-fragmented like earlier and later versions of windoze.

I have never seen any other user mention these problems with NT on sites I visit.


You could have a look at this site (I originally found it by googling for 'help with windows'):

http://winmac.mvps.org/winnt.html

It might give you some help in getting defrag to work in NT. There's a huge amount of help and info there for anybody with windoze problems.

its not a problem really , the windows method is very fast and efficient, but it makes it difficult to safely resize an NTFS partition.
And fragments free space so very large files get fragmented (but big files probably arent common enough to annoy anyone but me)

I've got Windoze XP and Mandriva LE 2005. Don't know if it's the same for 2006, but when you get to Custom Partitioning, click on the blue bar that represents Windows, then click on resize - wait - then you can use a slider that indicates size in MB for your resized Windows partition - wait again, yawn, then chose your Linux partition sizes, in my case just / and swap.