Safely Installing on a Partition..

[UncleJohn]

Hi All,

Maybe I'm dumb (don't ask). Absolute
Newbie, here. I have "Boot Magic" on
my partitioned computer. Running Win98
on C:... Wish to put Linux on H: (4 Gigs,
totally free on H :)

When I tried to install RedHat7.0, it
comes to the point where it demands I
use "Druid" or "Fdisk" - no other option.
I'm informed to NOT use either, as this
will screw up the partitions OR MBR.

How do I get around this ?

Thanks, UncleJohn
:rolleyes:

[chimaybleue]

You can use Fdisk ... Never had a problem with it ... I don't know how RH manages the partitions before installing, but make sure you have at least 100 Mb of swap space and a root (/) partition (SuSe didn't create swap while installing on a partition) ... You may also want to create a /boot partition (50 Mb is far enough)

[rstebb]

I'm not sure if you are aware of it or not but since you are a "total newbie" I take it to mean that you don't know too much about partitions.
You cannot install Linux onto the H: partition. It is a DOS partition and you cannot install Linux onto a DOS partition. (Actually there are some distros that can)

If your harddrive is filled with DOS partitions you will need to delete or reduce a portion of them and create one or more ext2 partitions for Linux. During your install, Redhat is just warning you that you are about to destroy a portion of you DOS partitions. If these partitions are empty then no problem. If they contain valuable data then move it. As a newbie you should probably create whatever partitions Redhat installer recommends. Or you can do a search on 'partitioning' here at LNO and you will find lots of recommendations. Craig used to give lots of advice about partitioning.

Good luck!!

[UncleJohn]

I know about partitions. I'm a windows Tech,
however I have drives H: and I: totally
clean and waiting to change them to
ext2.

I also have "boot magic" on this machine.
Which simply sez "go ahead and install it
on the partition you want..." Plenty of
room on the empty drive. But no further
info worth a damn. It's Linux RedHat7.0.
EVERYBODY assumes the User has one big,
fat C: drive alone.

If that were the case, I know about defrag
and 'fips'.... no problem. But I have a
lot of data spread out over the other
drives I want to save. Drive H is 4 Gigs,
drive I: is 3 Gigs. Both are totally empty.

How do I make drive H: an ext2 fortmat ?
(I guess that's the question)

Thanks for any help !!

Originally posted by rstebb:
I'm not sure if you are aware of it or not but since you are a "total newbie" I take it to mean that you don't know too much about partitions.
You cannot install Linux onto the H: partition. It is a DOS partition and you cannot install Linux onto a DOS partition. (Actually there are some distros that can)

If your harddrive is filled with DOS partitions you will need to delete or reduce a portion of them and create one or more ext2 partitions for Linux. During your install, Redhat is just warning you that you are about to destroy a portion of you DOS partitions. If these partitions are empty then no problem. If they contain valuable data then move it. As a newbie you should probably create whatever partitions Redhat installer recommends. Or you can do a search on 'partitioning' here at LNO and you will find lots of recommendations. Craig used to give lots of advice about partitioning.

Good luck!!

[bdg1983]

You should be able to use the Linux fdisk to delete drive H and recreate the ext2 partition and swap partition in the free space. Of course Partition Magic makes it a little easier to do.

There is a NHF on fdisk here http://www.linuxnewbie.org/nhf/intel/installation/fdisk_nhf/Fdisk.html

Post back if you still need assistance