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  • Partition tools

    I am trying to get into this whole linux thing and have grabbed a book with a full guide to everything plus red hat 8.0. A few questions:

    I know it has to be installed on its own partition and i know that fips does not work on NTFS hard disks, which mine is. Does anyone know which freeware programs will do a nondestructive repartition on my drive so i can install red hat? I need XP on there as well (for the moment)

    I've read on this forum that theres a red hat 9.0. if i install 8.0 and mess about with that for a bit, can i upgrade to 9.0 or do i have to format and start again?

    This is my first post and i would appreciate any help getting me started, because from what i hear linux is the way to go.

    Cheers,

    Bob Shop

  • #2
    Just to correct you, Linux needs unallocated space. Just space that has yet to be partitioned or written on. It will create 3 partitions for you then. One is the Boot partition which contains the boot information, one is the root partition which is your main partition, and the other is the swap partition which is just swap space (virtual memory).

    I do not know of any free programs to work with partitions, however Partition Magic is what most people would use. There may be a trial version out there, just search google.

    And yes, there is a Red Hat 9.0. You will be able to simply upgrade after your done with Red Hat 8.0, but remember that means a long time of downloading :(.

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    • #3
      another vote for partion magic here, but it's not free

      I'm not aware of any freeware/opensource products that do that, or at least do it well

      and yes, you can upgrade RH 8 to RH 9 (much better than a windows update ;) )

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      • #4
        Thanks for the advice. Sorry about the unallocated/partition thing. All very confusing. I think i'm getting into this linux thing. Openoffice sounds better than office 2003 at £200 for sure.

        Cheers

        Bob

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        • #5
          ya, openoffice is great, I've been using it for close to a year now....havn't even thought about going back to M$ office

          being cross-patform is also a bonus, so I don't have to get used to a different office suit every time I switch to a different OS =)

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          • #6
            Thanks for all the help. I tried installing Red Hat 8 alongside XP today and it was a bit of a disaster. I partition magiced the drive to create 15gb unallocated space at the end of the drive. I got to the installation menu and i had read something about installing the boot loader on the first sector of the boot partition rather than the master boot something to stop it overwriting the windows master boot record. I dutifully created the boot disk and installed linux. I rebooted the computer and i just get 'error loading operating system' There is nothing i can do and the pc will not respond. I can get into linux with the boot disk, but can't even load dos with the partition magic rescue disk. Any help would be much appreciated, although i might have to format and start again. Any tips on avoiding this in the future would also be good.

            Cheers

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            • #7
              Pop in that Windows XP Disc and boot into the Recovery Console by following the on screen instructions. Once there, you can use the fdisk /mbr or type help to see a list of commands. I am not quite sure if it is fdisk /mbr so maybe use help.

              Or, if you have a Windows 98 boot disk handy, pop that in and use fdisk /mbr.

              Basically, that will rewrite yoyur master boot record and will allow you to boot into windows. To get into linux, you will need to use the disk you created. You could just try to install linux again if you want. I am not sure where you screwed up with GRUB.

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