Installing MAndriva now -urgent question

Sandals

I am trying to keep windowes and install mandriva on a different partition,
My hard drive is 75gb, yet when I try to shrink the windows to 65 using the install wizard it doesnt work and schedules a chkdisk yoke? any ideas?
i have 35gb free.

Snowbat

Defrag the drive (in Windows) and then try again.

SantaHoe

If it were me I'd use something like partition magic... I still don't trust linux installers with my partitions :eek:

Big P

http://gparted.sourceforge.net/livecd.php

hamster

Yes, defrag the window drive before doing anything! Even check that your main windows swap is contigous as possible (fixed swap might be best).

Anyway defrag and then either use partition magic or use the Drake tool in Mandriva. Personally I tried this twice - once on my 30Gb laptop (20/10Gb split) and my main PC (split off 10Gb). Again don't do this if your drive is fragmented.

Sandals

Big P wrote:

http://gparted.sourceforge.net/livecd.php

Ok thanks for that I installed it and it looks pretty cool, except it wouldn't work!
I got the exact same message as when trying it under Mandrake, resizing failed basically.


When I try and defrag the drive, i get an error report at the end stating that some files failed to defrag? could this be causing the problem? any ideas on what i can/ should do?

Snowbat

From http://www.mandriva.ie/documentation/Chapter1_Installation_Warning.html

If you plan on using Windows as well as GNU/Linux in dual-boot (meaning being able to access either OS on the same computer), please note that it is easier to install Windows before GNU/Linux. If Windows is already set up on your system, and you have never installed GNU/Linux before, DrakX Mandrake Linux's installation program will have to resize your Windows partition. This operation can be harmful to your data. Therefore, you must perform the following steps before proceeding:

* you must run scandisk on your Windows computer. The resizing program can detect some obvious errors, but scandisk is better suited for this task;
Note
Before using scandisk (or defrag) make sure your screen saver and any other program that might write to the hard disk is turned off. To obtain even better results, run scandisk in Windows's Safe Mode.

* for maximum data security, you should also run defrag on your partition. This further reduces the risk of data loss. This is not mandatory, but it is highly recommended. Doing so will make the resizing process much faster and easier.

* the ultimate insurance against problems is to always back up your data! Of course, back up your data on another computer, upload your back-ups on the web, on a friend's computer, etc. Do not back it up on the computer on which you want to install GNU/Linux.

If neither scandisk nor defrag are installed within Windows, please refer to the Windows documentation for instructions on installing them.
Warning

NTFS Partitions. Windows 2000, NT or XP users should be careful: even though it is possible to resize NTFS partitions with GNU/Linux, it is highly recommended to back up your data before starting installation. Use partition resizing at your own risk.

Sandals

kool thanks It worked/.