1 Topic by MrWCS

  • MrWCS
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Topic: Need help trying something...

Hello fellas,

I need advice on Gparted livecd. I run it on my old HP Pavillion N3402 notebook. It detects the following:

Fat16    /dev/hda1   274.52MiB    (Used: 270.65MiB)   (UnUsed: 3.86MiB)
First Sector: 63
Last Sector: 562274
Total: 562212

Fat32   /dev/hda2    4.68GiB      (Used: 3.04GiB)   (UnUsed: 1.34GiB)
First Sector: 562275
Last Sector: 9751454
Total: 9189180

Unallocated   7.84MiB
First Sector: 9751455
Last Sector: 9767519
Total: 16065

DiskLabel: msDos       Size: 4.66GiB       Heads: 255       Sectors: 63     
Cylinders: 608      Total Sectors: 9767520

I have Windows M.E. somewhat still working and I'd like to make room on here for DSL. I really don't care if I'm rid of M.E., I just want the room on the drive for DSL and other linux stuff. I think the hda1 is for my D: cdrom or something that' why I didn't want to tamper with it first, plus, is it normal to have both Fat16 & Fat32 together like this?

Questions....

1. Can I do "delete partition" on the Fat32 and re-partition it?

2. Or is it possible to resize/move/copy things to get the desired result?

I just want to make sure the best route before using the delete option or the other options. I read up on the GParted PDF documentation and still trying to get clear on it.

Please advise... Thanks....

2 Reply by LarryT

  • LarryT
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Re: Need help trying something...

MrWCS wrote:

I read up on the GParted PDF documentation and still trying to get clear on it.

Hm, I'm interesting with this ! What do you miss in those docs ? I could make them better, but only if i get feedback smile

Larry
GParted-project Admin
Former GParted-LiveCD maintainer (2007)

3 Reply by MrWCS

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Re: Need help trying something...

Hi and thanks LarryT,

Um, well, I guess what scares me is the wording like: "The Partition menu is of upmost importance. It allows you to do many operations, some of which are DANGEROUS. Delete is selected if you want to delete a partition". The word "dangerous" is making me pause a little.

And I guess a part of me wants to experiment with Windows M.E. before competely wiping it out. I have seen online examples of DSL working inside a Windows program. But if I can't get that to work together then I still don't mind dumping M.E.

I just want to obtain ample space on the drive to load DSL and other stuff before I mess around with deleting anything. Other documentations I've read online says to have at least 3 partitions and at bare minimum for DSL -- 50MiB. I just trying to figure the best way to obtain the space...

4 Reply by LarryT

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Re: Need help trying something...

Well, as you can guess, deleting is always something dangerous. Even when you decide to empty your trash, you system should return a warning message ! something like that : " are you sure you want to delete files from trash ?"

That's the reason why we decided to use such a word.

The real problem is to know that deleting a partition might change the number of the partitions ! This is true only for logical partitions. For instance, if you have hda5 and hda6 and hda7 (which are logical partition, since they begin from 5 and over), and you decided to delete hda6 : be aware that hda7 will become hda6 ! This is ofr linux system. Because when booting, some loader refer to partition number ! So booting from /dev/hda7 is not possible if hda7 became hda6 ! Anyway there is a workaround to make it work : nowadays labels are used to aviod this kind of problem. When loader wanna boot from "label=/" it makes no differences if / is hda5 or hda6 or even hde8, hdb9,...
windows system usually use letters, and afaik it reacts like label.

Larry
GParted-project Admin
Former GParted-LiveCD maintainer (2007)

5 Reply by LarryT

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Re: Need help trying something...

In your configuration, you can either shrink hda1 or hda2. I should chose hda2, but it doesnt make any difference at the end. After you shrink hda2 you will get some free-space called "'unallocated". This space can be used to create a new partition that might be called hda3. When creating you are asked for file system you wanna create : default is ext2, which should be okay for DamnSmallLinux (hm, in fact i wonder if dsl runs on fat or ext fs ...).

Larry
GParted-project Admin
Former GParted-LiveCD maintainer (2007)

6 Reply by MrWCS

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Re: Need help trying something...

Hey Thanks LarryT,

I'll work on that and get back to you on the results or other problems...

You guys are great help on here!!!  Thanks for all your support Sir, and love the quote:

"Computers are like air conditioners - They stop working properly when you open Windows !"

7 Reply by LarryT

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Re: Need help trying something...

wink

Larry
GParted-project Admin
Former GParted-LiveCD maintainer (2007)