[Herefordshire] - Reclaiming Partition Space

[Dr Chris Owens]

Hello everyone.

    From a real 'Newbie' playing with  'Mandrake 10.0' in the absolute
'Beginner' class and beginner really is the word. Haven't even managed to
load my distro yet (On to a 30Gb, 320 MB RAM, Intel Pentium P6 MMX Laptop
running Windows 98 (2nd Edition v4.10 Build 2222(A)) where the main problem
seems to do with reclaiming enough contiguous space from the Windows
Partition where it seems there is 20GB free but peppered with immovable data
blocks.

    In the first attempt at re-partitioning the disk (after disk checking
and defragmentation with Windows ScanDisk and Defrag and OnTrack Fix-it
Utils 3.0) Mandrake took 1.25 GB for root and 254 MB for Swap, obviously
insufficient to run the full system but a text version (I assume Run Level
1) did load successfully together with bootloader (Grub2) . A second attempt
to re-partion the disk manually and allocate 10GB, 5GB and 500MB for Root,
Home and Swap gave the error message that the Windows Partition is too
fragmented, a further defrag was recommended but to no effect. The visual
display of used and partly used cluster blocks in Windows Drefrag and
Ontrack Jetfrag displays show about 10 scattered 'partly used' blocks most
of them seemingly near the end of the windows partition and in both programs
these are depicted as 'Data that will not be moved' . Sure enough they are
not moved - its just as though Windows has ring-fenced about 20GB for itself
by scattering around a few immovable obstacles.

    Is there a way out of this? Can or should these clusters be moved or
deleted, if so how  and is there any way that a binary listing could help to
clarify what they contain and whether it would be safe to delete them.

    Any suggestions more than welcome

    Many thanks

    Chris Owens (Tenbury Wells)