[SWLUG] Windows XP

[Steve Anderson]

Most likely the whole drive is taken up with a single NTFS partition for 
XP, and, depending on the make of laptop, a hidden 'recovery' partition 
to stop people from having access to a real, tangible disc for backup 
which they might pass out among friends. This is the way with modern 
laptops, sadly.

I suspect there's a distro out there that will do the partition resizing 
for you, and Mandrake is a prime candidate given its target audience. 
Failing that you'll need something like Partition Magic to do the 
resizing for you - an old version I used resized FAT partitions with no 
problem, and I'd be surprised if a newer version isn't capable of 
resizing NTFS.

Steve

Julian Hall wrote:

> Hi Michael,
> 
> I've only used Mandrake 9.0 and 9.1, but both will partition the drive
> during installation and can be told to use the unallocated section.  I'm
> assuming here by "using less than 10Gb" you mean 30 is not allocated, or do
> you mean it is all FAT32 formatted?
> 
> Kind regards,
> 
> Julian
> 
> -----Original Message-----
> From: discuss-admin at swlug.org.uk [mailto:discuss-admin at swlug.org.uk]On
> Behalf Of Michael Parker
> Sent: 14 April 2004 12:16
> To: 'discuss at swlug.org.uk'
> Subject: [SWLUG] Windows XP
> 
> 
> Hi,
> 
> Just got a new laptop, with windows XP on it. Has a 40GB HDD which is not
> partitioned. Using less than 10GB at the moment. Is there a linux distro
> that i can just bung disk in, sit back and watch as it seamlessly installs
> and partitions the drive? Or do i need to partition the drive first?
> 
> (Can you reply to the list and also this address, as i only get the
> digest...)
> 
> cheers
> 
> Mikey.