SillyDog701

[Edward]

My Maxtor 40 Gb hard drive failed, and it was replaced with a larger (60 Gb) Western Digital hard drive.

In order to format and partition the drive, I had to use the Western Digital software which came with the drive, and it partitioned it as one 60 Gb drive.

Windows 98 SE installed with no problems.

However when I tried to install Linux, it had problems. Initially, YaST (SuSE Linux 9.0) wanted to create a 19 Gb partition for Windows, with the remainder for Linux. The first attempt to install this, it reported an error in the cluster count, Linux had been looking for a count of a little over 1,000,000 clusters, however the count that was reported was over one billion (1,000,000,000) clusters, and therefore would not install.

On the second attempt to install Linux, I tried to manually select the size of the partitions, thinking that if I split it in half (30 Gb for Windows, 30 Gb for Linux), it might install, but did not get that far. It then reported there were errors on the Windows partition, and to reboot and run both Scandisk and Disk Defrag. Both were run, and neither program found any errors.

Where the WD software partitioned the drive as one, it is not possible to install Linux now, without again losing all of the Windows software that was installed after the OS?

UserAgent: Mozilla/5.0 (Windows; U; Win98; en-US; rv:1.5) Gecko/20031007

[Wellander]

Hi,
I do not use the software the come with Hard Drives.
I let the Windows Software do that.
Did you try to install linux first?
Did you reformat the drive before the repartition?

UserAgent: Mozilla/4.0 (compatible; MSIE 6.0; Windows NT 5.0; .NET CLR 1.1.4322)

[Mandrake]

When doing a dual boot system, Windows always goes on first. I just use the partition portion of Windows Setup to do it. Leaving a hunk of space for Linux, then the Linux installer automatically uses that space, no problems.

UserAgent: Mozilla/5.0 (Windows; U; Windows NT 5.1; en-US; rv:1.5) Gecko/20031007

[Edward]

Unfortunately, that did not occur this time around. There is something about the partition that SuSE Linux does not like, and YaST will not install it.

Windows was installed first...

UserAgent: Mozilla/5.0 (Windows; U; Win98; en-US; rv:1.5) Gecko/20031007

[uncw05]

I'm attempting to install windows xp and redhat linux 9 on the same computer. The problem is that my windows install disk does not allow me to partition, and if I partition in Linux first, windows erases all of the partitions. Is there any way around this?

UserAgent: Mozilla/5.0 (X11; U; Linux i686; en-US; rv:1.2.1) Gecko/20030225

[Mandrake]

You can easily do this. First run the Windows XP setup, and setup an NTFS partition for Windows XP, using whatever space you want, reserving an ammount for Linux (I kept 10gb free), then after XP is installed run the Redhat setup and tell it to only utilize exsisting partitions, then it will install that... install the LILO boot loader as well to dual boot and your done.

UserAgent: Mozilla/4.0 (compatible; MSIE 6.0; Windows NT 5.1; .NET CLR 1.1.4322)

[uncw05]

The only windows install disk I have is a compaq quick restore, which deletes all partitions and does not give the option to create new ones. is there a way to hide the linux partition from the install cd?

UserAgent: Mozilla/5.0 (X11; U; Linux i686; en-US; rv:1.2.1) Gecko/20030225

[Mandrake]

No. You need to use Partition Magic in Windows to do this, or use a new Linux distro such as Mandrake 9.2 or SuSE 9 that can resize an NTFS partition to free up some space for Linux.

UserAgent: Mozilla/5.0 (Windows; U; Windows NT 5.1; en-US; rv:1.6) Gecko/20040113