What program(s) (if any) do you suggest on partitioning a hard drive? If you don’t suggest any programs, and references on howto do it otherwise?
** Note: I’m going to be partitioning a Windows 98 system to hopefully install Linux (or a variant) **
If you use Mandrake Linux, while installing it gives you a option to partition the hard drive, provided Windows is installed first. I have used it and its very efficient.
Other than that, I have never partitioned my drive, so I have no programs to offer.
-Bharat
Thanks very much. I’ll probably try to install Mandrake Linux, since it also seems to be a popular choice outside of RedHat.
You don’t even need to install it to partition. All you have to do is put the first CD in, get through some stuff about your keyboard and mouse, then you can do that. After you finish the partitioning and hit “Next” (or whatever it says) and it finishes the partition changes, you can Ctrl-Alt-Delete to restart you computer.
For general partitioning, also for modifying partitions, deleting, or merging them, I use PartitionMagic: http://www.powerquest.com/partitionmagic/
Its great.
partition magic is awesome. Also, Mandrake is not the only linux distro that parititions, i believe Suse (forgot capitilization) does too
I was thinking about that, I might use it.
This is a lil’ off topic, but it’s SUSE now (yes, all caps…dunno why but it is).
Are you going to be destructively or nondestructively partitioning
your hard drive? By destructive, I mean starting from scratch.
Nondestructive means keeping your existing data intact and shrinking
the existing partition(s).
If destructive is ok, then just use the partitioning program included
in the installation of the distribution you choose.
If you want to do it nondestructively, by far the easiest and safest
program is Partition Magic. However, it will set you back about $70
(although it is worth it, in my opinion, if you want to do anything
more then the bare minimum).
http://www.ranish.com/part/ is a good free program that can be run
from DOS. I’ve never had it screw up, but it has a steep learning
curve.
QTParted is included with knoppix. It has a gui and so is slightly
more intuitive the ranish partition manager, but just doesn’t “seem
right” to me. In other words, I feel more comfortable with ranish,
even if it took longer to learn.
I think Mandrake may be able to nondestructivelty partition also, but
I’m not sure.
The main reason to use partition magic is it can handle many more cases
then either of the free ones. Often times, Windows 2000 and XP will
put files toward the end of your parition, and not move them when you
defrag. (I’ve run into this on more then one computer). ranish and
QTparted being merely partitioning programs won’t move data, and so
can only shrink as far as the last data in the partition. Partition
Magic is much smarter and will move that data, and allow you to shrink
as much as possible.
My advice is to leave the free space unpartitioned, and then use the
partitioning tool included with your distribution to partition the
free space.
PS All major distros (and almost all others) include partitioning tools. Very few include nondestructive partitioning tools, though.
I’m doing it non. I’ll try out PartitionMagic, and see if it works for me.
It’ll probably take a while though before I do this since I just realized today really that the computer only has a 12-gig hard drive (yes, it is very old), and is running Win98 SE.
Thanks for reminding me, Mandrake can nondestrutively do it, but you have to defragment your disk PROPERLY before installing mandrake, otherwise it will eat up a part of windows.
I have now got SUSE Linux 9.1 Personal dual booting on my old computer 
Thanks to everyone for helping me 
Congractulations buddy:p
I’d like to say though that SUSE doesn’t have partitioning ability (unless it didn’t show it for me since I already did partition).
I use Partition Magic 8.0 and I find it is excellent. Through a combination of deals at CompUSA, I managed to get it for 9 cents. =)
Apart from Partition Magic, I use the partitioning program built into the RedHat and Fedora Core installers (Disk Druid, i think). It is quite good also.
I haven’t installed SUSE sinse version 8.1, but I’m sure they have a
partitioning tool. They may have just hidden it if you didn’t choose a
custom install.
I didn’t even get an option for custom install (might be because of my lame computer running YasT in text mode). I think I found a way to fix this problem though (I love WINE if it works). I’ll just run PartitionMagic, and try to format my C: drive