On Fri, Mar 01, 2002 at 11:48:03PM +0530, K.Ghosh wrote: > > While doing so, I wanted to partition my hard disk as - > > hda1 (primary) - 20MB - ext2 - linux boot, > hda2 (primary) - 512MB - vfat - windows98, > hda3 (extended) - 2056MB > hda4 - 1536MB - vfat - windows softwares > hda5 - 512MB - vfat - windows games > hda6 (extended) - 1550MB > hda7 - 1330MB - ext2 - linux root > hda8 - 199MB - linux swap. >
An IDE HDD can take upto 4 partitions. All four may be primary or 3 primary and 1 extended under which you many logicals as needed. Unfortunately, M$ fdisk makes only one primary and the rest as extended logicals. Your initial partitioning therefore has to be done under Linux. > > My hda is 4311MB (CHS=8354/16/32) as per linux and 4111MB as > per dos; no bad sectors. The Linux thing is correct. There were these 4.3 GB disks ava- ilable about 2-3 years ago, but, AFAIK, no 4.1 GB disks were ever made. > > I had hoped to create hda1 to hda3 in dos fdisk and hda6 in > linux cfdisk. But partitions hda1 to hda3 made in dos(win98/ > winME) were rejected outright by cfdisk. Also, cfdisk would > not allow me to have two extended partitions. > There is absolutely NO need for partitioning with two OSs. The M$ fdisk boundary markers are not trustworthy. The best tool for initial partitioning is the good old legacy Linux "fdisk" program (not cfdisk). This is command line single character interface, a bit unfriendly, but definitely the most versatile of the Linux partitioning programs. Dont know if RH ships with fdisk these days, but your initial partitioning can be done even with stand alone floppy based distros like "tomsrtbt" and "alfalinux", both of which have fdisk. > > So, I had to be contended with hda3 as a primary partition > of 2056MB and hda6 as extended. I have now installed and > running both win and lin. But though windows can see hda2 & > hda3 primary partitions, when I switch to dos mode (from > windows), hda3 is no longer visible. > M$ cannot "see" non M$ partitions. Your hda3 now is a PRIMARY ext2 partition ... it wont be seen. M$ fdisk will see these as Non-DOS, but there will be no C: D: etc against them, and will do nothing about them. > > Also, linux reports hda3 as 1950MB, but windows can see only > 1550MB. Of late, windows has started complaining about not > being able to read the last sector on drive c: ie. hda2 and > asks for LBA to be turned on. > This is likely when you partition with fdisk programs of diff- erent OSs. Boundary conflicts may result ... > > Any thing wrong with what I have done ? Any guidance to good > partitioning please ? > Your 4.3 GB disk is not large enough to take on everything, if two OSs are installed. You need to restrict the software that you install. If you intend using both the OSs for your work, a safe strate- gy would be to keep about 2GB for Win and 2 GB+ for Linux. You need to keep 2-3 times your physical RAM for Linux swap. This layout would be suitable for you: hda1 ... PRIMARY ... 1.0 GB ... Type "c" ... Win 95 (LBA) hda2 ... PRIMARY ... 2.0 GB ... Type 83 ... Linux / hda3 ... PRIMARY ... 0.5 GB ... Type 83 ... Linux /home hda5 ... EXTENDED ............. Type 5 Under this make logical partitions for D: and keep about 128mb at the end for Type 82 for Linux swap. Your D: would be about 800mb. In case you expect more data, compress this drive under Win. All partition entries to be made under Linux fdisk. Do NOT use Windows fdisk for this ... There is no need for seperate /boot /usr, /var etc. keep them all under /. HTH Bish -- : ####[ Linux One Stanza Tip (LOST) ]########################### Sub : Searching for rpm package name LOST #238 Want to know to which package a particular executable or binary on your rpm based distro lies ? Do : #rpm -qf `which <executable-file>` ####<[EMAIL PROTECTED]>#################### : _______________________________________________ linux-india-help mailing list [EMAIL PROTECTED] https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/linux-india-help
