Level 0 question - partition

[sebastian]

Hi
I'm extremely new to Linux in general, and I'm trying to plan the installation of Fedora Core 1.
Right now I have a box with 40GB and WinXP installed on it. There is just one partition (C: ). Reading through the documentation and in this forum I still can't solve my doubt about the partition process.
Can I simply create the partitions needed with parted - inculded in the Fedora CD#1, or do I have to do a previous work with "fdisk" or "PartitionMagic"?

Thanks in advance

Sebastian

[crackers]

You may be out of luck. If WinXP handles the filesystem like W2K does, you've got system files at the beginning and end of the partition and you can't resize it (that I know of).

But, to answer your specific question, parted and PartitionMagic are basically the same thing - they allow you do re-arrange (move, size, etc.) the partitions on your hard drive. fdisk creates and deletes partitions. When you installed XP, the installation process did (used?) an "fdisk" program to create that partition that you see.

[mhelios]

You can resize your NTFS partition using a program called funnily enough "ntfsresize". :)
You don;t need Linux already installed to run it, and it's non-destructive. See my post at the end of this thread for more info:
http://www.fedoraforum.org/forum/showthread.php?s=&threadid=174
Here's the ntfsresize FAQ:
http://mlf.linux.rulez.org/mlf/ezaz/ntfsresize.html

[sebastian]

Thanks for the answer mhelios.
I managed to get a linux distribution bootable from CD (dyne:bolic) with ntfsresize and tested it. It seems to work fine but I'm not happy with the minum freeing space it allows me to create: 8GB out of 19GB of not used space.

If I check the fragmentation of the disk with the WinXP defragmenter application I see a block right in the middle of the space I would like to free for fedora on the right side- it is of the "blue type" (contiguos files? : lenguage settings in spanish, sorry).
If I ask for fragmentation, despite the fact that the analyzer says there's no need for that, it would not move it.
I guess this data must be related to the fact that I have an IBM laptop and there is where it stores the recovery files. Don't know if this is actually true: from linux I saw 2 partitions hd1 and hd2, hd2 having files I have never seen before.

Any clue on how to move it so I can free more space? Is it enough 8 GB for Fedora? I gues I will not be able to access files in the NTFS partition from fedora, right? Altough the reverse is true.

Thanks again for your help.

[mhelios]

Like crackers mentioned, XP will probably not let you defrag those files that you can't seem to shift. Apart from re-installing XP with a smaller partition size...I'd say just use the 8G for now...As soon as you realise how much better Fedora (linux in general) is than Windows, you'll want to delete the XP aprtition and assign the whole disk to Linux! (well maybe..:o )
And yes, Linux can access the files on the NTFS partition, search the forum for NTFS and you'll uncover a few posts describing how.

[sebastian]

Thanks to both of you. I hope I can get rid of WinXp someday.
I think we can close this thread now.