[Wylug-help] Partitioning HDD

[Dave Fisher]

On Mon, Mar 17, 2003 at 08:01:37AM -0000, Salil Khamkar wrote:
SK> There are 2 partitions available for use. The hda2 does not have any
SK> backup copies of XP for recovery and contains my data. The disk is a
SK> 40GB hdd, and has 2, 20GB partitions. Ideally I want to devote around
SK> 3-4 GB for my linux native partition.

If I have read that correctly, and you can't access a copy of Partition
Magic, this one of my original suggestions should apply:

DF>> If the data on your second partition (/dev/hda2) isn't a recovery
DF>> partion, you could save the raw data on it to removable media or another
DF>> networked device (using the dd or netcat commands from a bootable Linux
DF>> CD like Knoppix), then destructively repartion it with fdisk or parted
DF>> into /dev/hda2 and /dev/hda3 (making sure that /dev/hda2 is identically
DF>> sized or larger than the raw data you copied), then use dd to copy the
DF>> data back to the smaller /dev/hda2.  This would leave an empty /dev/hda3
DF>> for installing an alternative OS like Linux.

Since you know the sizes you want for /dev/hda2 and /dev/hda3, the main
outstanding thing you need is some time to read the help/man pages for
fdisk, parted, dd and netcat about how to set those sizes and howto copy
your data back and forth.

Note: Newbies are typically pointed towards cfdisk rather than fdisk,
because the fdisk interface is a bit scary (e.g. measuring partitions
ing 512KB blocks rather than human-friendly MBs).  Unfortunately, cfdisk
seems to achieve its user-friendliness by rounding to the nearest MB,
which can create a bit of a mess if you are measuring to the nearest
byte using dd to take an exact image of a partition.

Best wishes,

Dave