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good partitioning program?

Former MemberFormer Member Posts: 1,876,323 The Mix Honorary Guru
in General Chat
So I'm trying to setup dualboot on my PC for work with Linux Redhat/WindowsXP, but I need to create another partition on the master HD without formatting/losing all the info on the disk.......can anyone recommend a good partitioning program that will do this? cheers.

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    Former MemberFormer Member Posts: 1,876,323 The Mix Honorary Guru
    you using windows xp

    you can do it with xp, not the best of tools (as im sure all the microsoft hate group here will tell you), but it works
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    Former MemberFormer Member Posts: 1,876,323 The Mix Honorary Guru
    Any modern self-respecting Linux distribution will allow you to resize partitions from within the installer. :)
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    Former MemberFormer Member Posts: 1,876,323 The Mix Honorary Guru
    partition magic 8
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    Former MemberFormer Member Posts: 1,876,323 The Mix Honorary Guru
    If you can afford it, buy a £30 80gig hard drive and install linux on that drive, and install the boot loader onto the old master drive.

    Otherwise, most people use partion magic after defragging the hard disk.
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    Former MemberFormer Member Posts: 1,876,323 The Mix Honorary Guru
    thanks for the advice, i didn't actually know you could do it in xp, but redhat uses a different filesystem not NTFS (should still be able to make the partition tho) so suppose I should do it from the Linux installer, i just wasn't sure if it would fuck up the Windows MBR as I don't want any mistakes........pendari i do actually have a spare hard drive i could use and that might be an option, but how do you go about installing the boot loader onto the master once its on the other drive?........
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    Indrid ColdIndrid Cold Posts: 16,688 Skive's The Limit
    You can choose which drive to install the bootloader on in the installer. If RedHat uses the same (or a similar) installer to Fedora, which I've tried, then you have to set the hard drive you want the bootloader on to be the first one.
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    Former MemberFormer Member Posts: 1,876,323 The Mix Honorary Guru
    oh right i get it, so the boot loader is just a pointer telling it to boot off the other hard drive?.....you dont actually have to have the two OS on the same physical drive? i didn't know you could do it like that cos of jumper settings, but that would be cool as its more logical in my head that way.....
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    Indrid ColdIndrid Cold Posts: 16,688 Skive's The Limit
    No, you choose which drive to boot from in the BIOS settings. The BIOS loads the bootloader it finds in the beginning of that drive. The bootloader loads the computer's operating system. The windows bootloader can only load versions of windows, and (usually) only from the same disk it's on, but the ones used by linux (usually GRUB or LILO) can load pretty much anything from anywhere.
    So if you installed linux on a different disk and put its bootloader on that one you could have both disks independent of each other. If you chose to overwrite the windoes bootloader you'd still be able to load windows, but only if the disk with linux was in the computer too, so having them separate is a good idea.
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    Former MemberFormer Member Posts: 1,876,323 The Mix Honorary Guru
    Zalbor wrote:
    No, you choose which drive to boot from in the BIOS settings. The BIOS loads the bootloader it finds in the beginning of that drive. The bootloader loads the computer's operating system. The windows bootloader can only load versions of windows, and (usually) only from the same disk it's on, but the ones used by linux (usually GRUB or LILO) can load pretty much anything from anywhere.
    So if you installed linux on a different disk and put its bootloader on that one you could have both disks independent of each other. If you chose to overwrite the windoes bootloader you'd still be able to load windows, but only if the disk with linux was in the computer too, so having them separate is a good idea.

    no to what exactly? im confused, sounds like you're saying you can have Windows and Redhat on separate disks, as long as the one with Linux is set to master, because Linux bootloader can boot either Linux or Windows, but Windows can only boot itself.........no?
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    Former MemberFormer Member Posts: 1,876,323 The Mix Honorary Guru
    I have windows on my master, linux on part of my slave and it's boot loader is installed to a floppy disk, that way if i want to load linux, i jsut stick the floppy in and it laods, if i want winodws i can take the floppy out. I used to have the boot loader installer to 'the Superblock of the Root Partition' which wasnt the MBR ( messed up once, scared me for life ) its jsut the linux root partiton and was bootable =D
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    Former MemberFormer Member Posts: 1,876,323 The Mix Honorary Guru
    softworld wrote:
    I have windows on my master, linux on part of my slave and it's boot loader is installed to a floppy disk, that way if i want to load linux, i jsut stick the floppy in and it laods, if i want winodws i can take the floppy out. I used to have the boot loader installer to 'the Superblock of the Root Partition' which wasnt the MBR ( messed up once, scared me for life ) its jsut the linux root partiton and was bootable =D

    softworld that sounds ideal, do you just choose the A: (or whatever it is in linux - dev/fd0) as the destination for installing the bootloader during the Linux installation..........?
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    Former MemberFormer Member Posts: 1,876,323 The Mix Honorary Guru
    depending on the installer, which for you seems to be Redhat's, it should give you an option during the bootloader installation to view advanced options ( it's set to MBR be default ) and you cna change it to be installed on the mbr, superblock or a floppy. however that chocie may vary. I'd reccomend Superblock or floppy, superblock is faster than floppy plus you can lose the floppy.
    I'd highly reccomend you DO NOT install to the MBR becuase when it goes wrong and comes crashignd own, you'll actaully want to kill yourself for wasting the last hour of your life.

    Also on the subjkect of Redhat, i used it for my linux server, didnt like it very much, good Distro id reccomend would be Vectorlinux, its extremly fast, even on a 500mhz machine and is one CD, it also installs in about 10minutes if your pc is pretty good.

    www.vectorlinux.com

    It also has the superblock and floppy options.

    Edit:
    Forgot to mention, go for the VL:SOHO edition. It's much better than the standard.

    KDE ftw!
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    Former MemberFormer Member Posts: 1,876,323 The Mix Honorary Guru
    hmm yeah i could always back the boot floppy up to my hard drive so that's not a problem, if i install it to the superblock is the root partition on the master or slave drive? (assuming i'm putting linux on the slave) i'm guessing it must be on the master or it would never boot linux.......my knowledge of linux is crap i'll admit, i'm only getting it at home so i can ssh into the test lab at work to fiddle around and hopefully learn some shit.......thanks for the advice though.
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    Former MemberFormer Member Posts: 1,876,323 The Mix Honorary Guru
    if you jsut want to SSH google for a program called PuTTY, it lets you ssh to linux.

    Root PArtition is the linux '/' partition. so it would be slave in your case. ( see what i did there? :p )
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    Former MemberFormer Member Posts: 1,876,323 The Mix Honorary Guru
    lol, alrite clever clogs cheers for the help.......yeah i use putty at work, but still need linux to play around at home for now, cos i haven't actually got around to building the test lab yet.....
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    Former MemberFormer Member Posts: 1,876,323 The Mix Honorary Guru
    alright, hope it goes to plan!
    2 books id reccomend
    1) Linux in Easy Steps by Mike Mcgrath - This will be such an easy book to understand.
    2)Teach Yuorself Linux by Robert billing - harder than the above one but teaches alot more.
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