hdd problems

[kold]

I have been having a problem getting linux to see my primary hdd, its a 160gb drive, and linux sees it as unpartitioned space. I really dont care about windows on there so I tried to just wipe it out and repartition with gparted, but I get this error message:
Error while setting disklabel.
Also when I was trying to install linux I could not get ubuntu or fedora installers to install on this drive.

I really want to have the main 160gb hdd partitioned so windows can have 50gb and then a 110gb partition for sharing files between the two.

Any help would be great, and be easy on me im very new to linux

[vidd]

first things first:

you need to understand that windows will NOT see your linux files.

You will need to set the following partitions:

%windows file system% do this by installing windows BEFORE you install linux....windows WILL OVERWRITE GRUB EVERYTIME

Once windows is installed, reboot your system and prepare to install linux

You will need to manually configure the partitions
At this time, you should see that there is a windows partition (#1 primary xxx.x GB <file format=ntfs or fat32> /media/hda1)

in order to create a partition that is viewable from windows and linux you need to create a partition as such:

Use as:                    FAT32 file system
Mount point:            /windows
Mount options:        sync
Bootable flag:          off
Size:                        xxx.x G(M)B

It is important that this is the LAST partition you configure as some distributions will strip the /windows mount point if you later choose to "Automatically partition free space" If this happens, simply return to this partition and reconfigure it BEFORE you write changes to the hard drive.

Once the installation is complete, you will need to follow the instructions for your distribution to mount the drive if it is not immediately visable.

Have fun

[kold]

That is what i tried to do, but the only way for me to install linux was add a second hdd. I could not install linux as the only OS because the installer would not even format my hard drive.

[vidd]

if the entire hard drive is formated by windows in ntfs, then linux may not be able to use it. do you have a way of formating the entire drive into fat32? (like a win9x install disk or other utility disk) feel free to message me directly for this issue

[lestoil]

If you still have XP or W2X you should be able to resize the XP partition under XP and leave 100G fat32 or unformatted partition that linux will now install onto. This will give you your 50G XP and the rest for whatever. Another way to resize ntfs and create fat32 or linux ext2,ext3,swap partitions is with programs such as PartitionMagic8.0,PartionCommander/SystemCommander, and Ranish or Rannish also has similar program.
Not sure if SYSTEM Rescue CD-ROM(0.2.15) would be useful.
One idea is to have XP in 20-40G/another fat32 partition with music/pix/whatever to share with linux. Then your linux partitions. Good luck.