RedHat Partitions on XP

[rh7]

I went to Install Redhat 7 on a new laptop that i just got, and it doesnt give me the option to automatically partition the hard drive. Is windows xp imbedded? Why can't I edit the original partitions with disk druid? Can I, Like I have on other installations, Keep windows for my web design class while Redhat is usable as well?

[majorwoo]

ill bet it came preinstalled with XP using the NTFS not FAT - you will need to wipe it and resintall XP using FAT32 in order to make it work I believe..

[bpark]

I agree with majorwoo. Before I started using Linux, I had Windows98 on my primary IDE hard drive. I believe that was back in the days when I used Redhat 7.0 for the first time. Anyhow, I had the same problem and I realized that FAT32 partition was the entire disk. At that point, I wanted just Linux on my system so I wiped the drive clean.
Even though that worked for me, that's NOT the advice I would give you. If you want to dual boot, defrag in Windows and then re-size your partition with a partition tool. I don't think any of the Linux partition tools will touch NTFS so if that's what you have, you need to re-install Windows and while re-installing, you'll get an option to specify the size of the partition.

bp

[rh7]

so pretty much all i need to do is reinstall XP and partition with FAT32.....or do I format the C: drive and reinstall with a smaller FAT32 partition

[rh7]

should I just delete the standard NTFS partition and give it the same amount of HardDrive space but in FAT32 format......can i edit a FAT32 windows/dos partition with the REDHAT 7.0 DiskDruid?!

[Dolda2000]

I don't quite understand why he would have to redo it with FAT? Linux does at least have reasonably stable read support for NTFS. If it takes up the entire drive, windows will of course have to be reinstalled (if partitionmagic can't resize it, that is), but I don't see how it would be incompatible. If disk druid would have some bug for NTFS or something, fdisk could still be used, right?

[majorwoo]

when i do the laptops that we get from dell i just wipe them and redo it in FAT - you know that ifi your system crashes and you boot from a win 98 floppy you cant read the NTFS right? dos doesnt read NTFS so i prefer FAT

[bpark]

The NTFS is a dangerous file system to mount even as READ ONLY. I know that most kernels support READ and WRITE but with this file system, we do NOT have the actual source as to how this file system is compromised. It's a trial and error thing when it comes to NTFS. However, most people won't have much trouble reading from it. I don't like taking risks with losing data on my pc so I guess I'm playing it safe.

bp

[rh7]

I am waaaay too dumb to use fdisk to partition!

[Dolda2000]

bpark:
NTFS is absolutely not dangerous to mount read-only. If you don't compile write support into the kernel, no writing is done, and thus it cannot be dangerous. Write support, on the other hand, is very dangerous. You just have to have mounted it, and you need to run chkdsk on it.

rh7:
fdisk really isn't very hard to use. It's rather self-explaining, it even tells you on the prompt which command to type to get help, so it's not very hard at all.