Partition Magic problems? is it worth it?

[benplaut]

i had scheduled this morning to be my install date (got to set a schedule for myself, or i'll chicken out ), except i ran into some problems with Partition Magic.

I had planned to use it to resize my current windows partition to allow 10gb of empty space at the end of the drive. I booted windows into safe mode (a precaustion i thought i should take), and used Partition Magic to resize the windows partition down 10gb (actually, something like 9996mb).

It asked to rebot to complete the changes, so, naturally, i let it. When it booted back up (into safe mode), it ran through the long list of drivers/processes needed to start in safe mode, and then just... stopped.

I did a force turn off, and booted into Windows standard mode. I checked Partition Magic, and it showed no indication that i had ever done anything with the program. I repeated the same process in regular mode, and let it reboot. When it rebooted, it began a formating windows (before the boot of the windows GUI) that said it was formating. Then, it popped an error saying that there were too many errors to continue, and to press any key to restart. On restart, it brought up the same windows again, and errored out again. I did a force turn off and booted back up. Once again, partition magic showed no indication of ever having done anything, and the disk was still all in one partition

Is it worth resizing the windows partition before installing linux (SuSE 9.2)? or will the linux setup take care of resizing and formating? I have heard some bad things about the partitioner in linux, but never really any details.

To sum this all up, should i try to fix the partition magic problems, or just let the SuSE installer take care of it?

another one of the newbies,
Ben

[dylunio]

I've never had any problem with SuSE's YaST partitioning tool, just remember to defrag your windows drive before installing.

dylunio

[benplaut]

I've never had any problem with SuSE's YaST partitioning tool, just remember to defrag your windows drive before installing.

dylunio

OK, thanks!

(now the nerve wracking begins...)

[gassman]

yeah i also used the SuSE partitoner and it did a great job

[benplaut]

I've never had any problem with SuSE's YaST partitioning tool, just remember to defrag your windows drive before installing.

dylunio

oh... darn!

my computer is horrible at defraging

sometimes can't defrag my backups... but looking into it right now