Reclaim Partition

[slick8790]

I partition my HDD a few weeks ago when i put mandrake on. well, i decided that i dont want it. I've already formatted the partitions, now how can i merge them back in to my windows one? can i? also, how would i uninstall the bootloader that mandrake left?



slick

[JohnHACK]

From my experience, I had Install SuSe Linux and WinXP, but I just format the partition where Linux installed using WinXP CD, after a second during the setup files transfers to partition formated, then I restart my PC through power button. After that, my windows can running, in windows I formatted the partition and merge them using PowerQuest Partiton Magic, it's very powerful....

[hypronix]

Hmm get PowerQuest's Partition Magic 8 [comes with Boot Magic] and do everything you need to do. Install Boot Magic also and replace the booter you have.

I am not sure about what free products you could use though. Did you use the stuff Mandrake came with in order to partition? Can you not use to reverse the process [without installin the OS again, surely].

[Zonewalker]

there are two ways you ca remerge the partitions....

1) remove all the partitons on your HDD using the windows CD and Fdisk (which OS you using by the way, 98, XP, 2K??) and then merge it that way - this will mean though that you have to reformat the disk and reinstall all of your windows OS again etc - a pain in the rear as I'm sure you know, using the format /mbr option will also remove the linux bootloader.
2) use something like partition magic like John Hack suggests

Option 1 will mean back ups, reinstalling etc - not a task to be done in 5 minutes. Option 2 carries risks too (so back up everything) but would be the least destructive

On the other hand - why not just leave the partitions as seperate - that way should you ever decide to dual boot things again you won't have to go through the pain of re- partitioning again. Having seperate partitions on a large HD also has some benefits... e.g save your data to the second partition and keep the primary partition for the OS and programs, if your windows OS gets corrupted and you have to reinstall - assuming you don't move about the partitions you won't have the hassle of reinstalling all of your data because it won't be touched by the reinstall.

Z

[edit] I'm going to have to type quicker aren't I[/edit]

[hypronix]

There is also a somewhat faster access time, since the tables for each partition are smaller = less stuff to go through. I am not sure if it's documented, but it works like this for me. Especially if you have a big HDD

[slick8790]

On the other hand - why not just leave the partitions as seperate - that way should you ever decide to dual boot things again you won't have to go through the pain of re- partitioning again.

well, as a matter of fact, that is what i am trying to do. i originally tried to install Suse, but it said that it couldnt shirnk my windows partition, so i decided to use mandrake, see how i liked it, them if i didnt, uninstall it and put ssuse. problem is, now suse doesnt recognize a windows parttions, so i cant boot in to it. suse only recognized windows if it was the only partition on the HDD. so basically, could i keep the second partition and have suse recognize windows? that would be an ideal case, but i figured that wasnt going to happen, so i thought i would have to make it all one partition again.



slick

[Zonewalker]

I have no experinece with SuSe so you might be better off asking Gore about this but.... how have you got the windows partions formatted - NTFS or FAT32? I really can't see any reason why Suse would not recognise a windows partition. As far as I am aware all linuxes can read/write to fat32 and can read NTFS without a problem (writing to NTFS is a little more problematic) but as I say I don't know Suse at all - i don't kow if it has some quirks (and strange ones at that if it does)

Assuming Suse acts like other linux variants you should be able to put Suse on the second partition and have it recognise the windows partitions without a problem. If you do this - instead of writing the linux bootloader to the mbr you might find it worth considering putting it on floppy disk.

Anyone able to advise better as regards Suse? I can't believe that it doesn't recognise a windows partition...

Z

[slick8790]

I have it formatted FAT32. This really wierd, because before i repartitioned it, it recognized windows...could that new partition mess up the Yast partition reader somehow?



slick

[rcgreen]

Your entry in /etc/fstab may not agree with what your windows
partition actually is, especially if you reformatted or made other
changes to it.

Check your partitions by running fdisk (as root)

[root@acer rcgreen]# /sbin/fdisk /dev/hda

Command (m for help): p

Disk /dev/hda: 255 heads, 63 sectors, 523 cylinders
Units = cylinders of 16065 * 512 bytes

   Device Boot    Start       End    Blocks   Id  System
/dev/hda1   *         1       490   3935893+  83  Linux
/dev/hda2           491       523    265072+  82  Linux swap

[root@acer rcgreen]# /sbin/fdisk /dev/hdb

The number of cylinders for this disk is set to 1027.
There is nothing wrong with that, but this is larger than 1024,
and could in certain setups cause problems with:
1) software that runs at boot time (e.g., old versions of LILO)
2) booting and partitioning software from other OSs
   (e.g., DOS FDISK, OS/2 FDISK)

Command (m for help): p

Disk /dev/hdb: 255 heads, 63 sectors, 1027 cylinders
Units = cylinders of 16065 * 512 bytes

   Device Boot    Start       End    Blocks   Id  System
/dev/hdb1             1       514   4128673+  83  Linux
/dev/hdb2           515      1027   4120672+  83  Linux

Make sure that the entries in /etc/fstab use the same partition names.

[root@acer rcgreen]# cat /etc/fstab
LABEL=/                 /                       ext3    defaults        1 1
none                    /dev/pts                devpts  gid=5,mode=620  0 0
none                    /proc                   proc    defaults        0 0
none                    /dev/shm                tmpfs   defaults        0 0
/dev/hda2               swap                    swap    defaults        0 0
/dev/cdrom              /mnt/cdrom              iso9660 noauto,owner,kudzu,ro 0 0
/dev/fd0                /mnt/floppy             auto    noauto,owner,kudzu 0 0
rcgreen:/               /mnt/network            nfs     noauto,user
/dev/hdb1               /public                 ext2    defaults
/dev/hdb2               /junk                   ext2    defaults

I have no windows partitions in this example, but you get the idea.

[slick8790]

well, i'm guessing you would get this through linux, but i dont have it on the partition anymore. i formatted it. second question, how can i get rid of the bootloader mandrake left on /dev/hda?

[edit] i tried diskpart, but that only works for NTFS filesystem and i have FAT32. [/edit]


slick