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Re-organizing for Linux
Yo ho.
I've decided to install Linux on a secondary partition on my computer. However, I'm quite unfamiliar with making partitions in place, and I'm unsure how accommodating my computer will be with it. To describe my current situation: Code:
HDD 0: 20GB Primary Partition (C:), 280 GB Logical Drive on Extended Partition (D:)What I would like to do is partition F: to give me some ext3 space and toss Linux on there. However, I'm extremely unfamiliar with how Linux handles boot drives, and I'm also unused to repartitioning devices on the fly. If necessary, I can copy the contents of F: to G: and reformat to make it available, but I'd rather not. I also can't have Linux running off of C:, as there isn't enough free space, and hey, that's my OS partition and I very much dislike downtime. So, to summarise: 1) Is it possible for Windows to be on C:, Linux to be on HDD1, and yet have a boot loader that will allow me to choose between the two? 2) If so, would there be any problem with partitioning HDD1 into a partial NTFS partition and an ext3 partition? 3) Can I reallocate space from the current F: partition on HDD1 and reformat it to ext3 without having to zero the disc? To all my Linux friends, cheers :D Also: I'm thinking starting with Ubuntu; any alternative recommendations? If so, please justify ;) |
Ubuntu makes things easy, no reason not to go with it aside from being forced to dive into it more with some other distributions.
Short version: 1) Is it possible for Windows to be on C:, Linux to be on HDD1, and yet have a boot loader that will allow me to choose between the two? Yes 2) If so, would there be any problem with partitioning HDD1 into a partial NTFS partition and an ext3 partition? No, this would be fine. However, within Linux you would not be able to write to any of your NTFS drives, and within Windows you wouldn't even see your Linux partitions. EDIT -- oh no wait, this is no longer true. My apologies. 3) Can I reallocate space from the current F: partition on HDD1 and reformat it to ext3 without having to zero the disc? Yes, but there is definitely a chance for data loss. You should back up all that you can/won't be depressed about losing before re-sizing existing partitions. Longer: 1) While I myself have not attempted to dual-boot off of two different physical drives, it's my understanding that GRUB or whichever boot loader is used will be able to detect the Windows install, which already exists on your machine, and point to wherever you end up putting your Linux install the same as if you were using multiple partitions on one physical drive, something I have done several times myself. Having typed that, someone who can speak more intelligently about any potential futzing around with the MBR should chime in if it will be necessary and not straight-foward like it is with single-drive, multiple partition installs. 2) First off, any re-partitioning, formatting, and so forth comes with the chance of wiping data or at least the pointers to where the data is, losing your files. Were I doing this, I would back up whichever drive was easiest to back up / I would suffer the least from losing to use as my Linux drive. So, if you want to use your F:, you should find places to put that data. Granted, Linux is not 465 GB, so you won't need all of this. However, even resizing/shrinking the NTFS partition can cause data loss (especially since the files may not all be contiguous and within the sectors used after shrinking). In any case, you should back up data before proceeding. While you are at it, you should be aware of drive format. NTFS used to be not readable in UNIX-like environments, and back when I had been setting up my first boxes had read-only capabilities in Linux thanks to a few development groups. It appears that now NTFS-3G provides both read AND write capability to NTFS partitions. As a result, I've amended this paragraph to just note that you should check and make sure that your distribution can read and write to NTFS. If not, it is probably in your best interest to set up a FAT partition of some kind to provide a space where both your OSs can get and place data. 3) As I sort of already got into, you'll have to re-adjust your partitions anyway if you want to have a more user-friendly machine. Yes, you can shrink a drive, but it might still erase data or bits on the drive that help identify where data is or bits that are part of files anyway. Programs like Partition Magic and the like, to my knowledge, will attempt to move data appropriately to avoid this from happening, but those aren't free solutions. You seem to have plenty of space, unless for some reason you are hoarding enough data and the like to actually use all 2+ terabytes you have listed. Start making some DVD backups, if so, or look into external USB or networked storage, I'd say. That said, you can adjust partitions using a live boot such as Knoppix. Knoppix is a pretty full-blown Linux distribution that fits on a CD. You burn the image to disk, put it in your optical drive, and boot from the CD. In moments, a Linux OS loads and boots into its desktop environment where you can play around with applications and the like as well as gain access to tools such as those that manage disks. You can pull up a partition manager to adjust your drives and partition tables, freeing up room. I've done this, but mostly to expand existing partitions and not shrink them. You can also usually do this straight from the installer for a Linux distribution, though they vary in how helpful they are with information about what you might be doing to your system. In either case, you'd be shrinking a drive down to whatever size and formatting the newly-unallocated space for your Linux install. If it were me, I'd migrate everything off of F:. I'd then wipe F completely. I'd run the installer and set up at least a swap and / partition on F taking up, oh, ~80 GB of that drive. That should be plenty to allow your Linux apps and the like room to grow when needed. I'd then format the rest of F: as FAT32**, either within Windows or otherwise, to use as a data repository that both Linux and Windows could write to. All of your other data on other drives could still be read by both, at least, though you will have to set up Linux to mount them. ** I haven't actually worked with NTFS-3G yet, since I really don't bounce back and forth between boots on the machine in question, so NTFS may be perfectly fine. When accessing my Linux box from another machine, the use of Samba to access the drives over my home network eliminates any need to care about drive format. My Ubuntu box has a small-ish, since it was made from components of former rigs, HDD that carries both XP and Ubuntu on it (I honestly haven't booted it to Windows in a year, though) and a data drive. The OS HDD has a Windows partition, a swap space partition, and a / ext3 partition; though the Linux installer offered to make another ext3-type partition, to separate user directories from the OS, I declined due to limited overall space on that drive (it's only ~40 GB). The other disk is one FAT32 partition that both OSs can read and write to. Yech, I had not meant to write so much. Hopefully it was not too wordy and tangential. |
Wall of text? More like win of text.
As to the booting issue, after further investigation and applying some logical thought, I don't see why there should be a problem. Thanks for the confirmation, though. As for the repartition, I'm definitely going to back up my stuff first. Wiping the drive won't take too long. I do need a portion of the drive to be NTFS, rather than FAT32, due to some larger files. I'd agree with you for 80 for Linux, but I'm keeping 200 for NTFS, and the remaining 160 will be FAT32 for a swap. There's an unallocated 50 GB that is now reserved for the currently downloading beta for Windows 7. Long story short, when I decide to try out new OS's, I don't mess around :p Another forum recommended GParted; I've already downloaded and burnt it. So, on my to-do list for tomorrow: 1) Backup F:. 2) Zero F:. 3) Use GParted to reallocate F:. 4) Might as well backup C: as well. My terabyte drive can spare the space 5) Install Ubuntu 8.10 6) Pray that nothing went wrong 7) Sacrifice a goat 8) Install Windows 7 Beta 9) Pray that my MBR is intact. |
maybe you are doing it right now
Oh, right, GParted. Good call.
That looks like a solid plan of attack. Good luck with everything. |
Well, shitballs.
Got Ubuntu running after a fashion. I'm having trouble running Windows XP through Grub, and I can only get each OS to boot if it's the boot drive (AKA either change in BIOS or physically change their positions). This is lesser problem. That 1TB drive I had? Now it's recognizing as 33MB in the Bios and GParted. Windows and TestDisk show it as 8 GB. Ubuntu doesn't see it at all. I lost all of my stored anime and tv, but that is small problem. What I want is my capacity back. I've tried fiddling with DBan, GParted, and the Windows Disk Manager with no luck. I didn't touch the drive at all when I was doing the repartitioning of the 500GB drive (Which, ironically, went perfectly and didn't touch my data at all). I can't think of anything software which would have done this. Please prove me wrong, because I would hate for this to be a hardware failure. It still should be under warranty, but I'd rather be able to fix this myself. Shitballs indeed. |
Do you have another computer you can hook it up to? It's possible that the data is still intact. As to getting your machine to recognize the capacity, I have no clue.
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While I'd certainly like to recover the data, I still have most of the .torrents that I used to get the video in the first place. The real concern is having room to put it.
Going to try using fdisk -l in Ubuntu; should have done that first, actually. |
:(
I, uh, I haven't ever heard of a drive other than the one being messed with having an issue.
I hadn't thought about it before, but what drive letter is your terabyte drive being assigned now? Introducing the extra partitions may have confused the drive lettering? Wow, I am really sorry. I have no idea why that happened. |
Well, what the fuck computer.
I spent the day attempting to format my TB drive that Windows regarded as 8 GB. I shut down and reboot with Ubuntu 8.10 Live-CD to run the aforementioned test. While previously it saw nothing, now it saw my TB drive in all it's TB glory. What the fuck? I reboot into BIOS, and check it there. Capacity: 1000 GB. What the fuck? I boot into Windows and go into compmgmt.msc. Disk Manager. It's there. There's the 8 GB primary partition and the rest is unallocated space. I'm currently running TestDisk to see if there's a chance of recovering my data, but I doubt it. Again, not too concerned; what I want is the space more than anything. I had watched most of that stuff anyway. Kind of sucks to lose it, but I can always re-download it, one season at a time. Now I'm curious as to why this happened. I have to head off to work, but I'll be back later with tales of my BHDDfH and trying to fix Grub. |
Not your fault, Synk. I'm experienced enough with partitions to realize that in no way should my terabyte drive have been touched. What I should have done is physically disconnected it, just to be sure.
TestDisk can't see a partition table on the drive, so I'm assuming my data is lost beyond the amount of effort I'm willing to spend on recovering it. Going into GParted to repartition it as a single device. Wish me luck. |
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