disk space

[James Mc]

Not reaaly sure in which forum this should be in (read on and you will see) but I am sure It wil be moved if necessary.

OK here goes but 1st a few specs
Tosi laptop 3.2 GHZ CPU
60G HD
512MB RAM

I was attempting to intsall xubuntu 8.04 today on my laptop that has XP home on it already so I could dual boot. I downloaded the xubuntu .iso and verified hash with md5sum so far so good. When it came time to do the latter stages of the installation it hung and I had no choice but to start again. This time I reburnt the install CD at a slower speed got a bit further but still no joy.

It did however get as far as to create the new partitions (twice) so I returned to XP and deleted them.
Now I have 2 partitions on my single HDD that looks a little like this

WinXP 23.67GB and 32.21 GB Unallocated.
Now XP is complaning alot as it does not have enough disk space to run. (it has effectively only 178M overhead.

What should/can I do to return to where I was before this event and reallocate the partition for XP so I can (maybe) try the re-install of xubuntu.

Thanks in advance guys and dolls.

[hammerhead]

Format the partitions from disk management in either FAT32 or NTFS.

[James Mc]

Format the partitions from disk management in either FAT32 or NTFS.

Hi hammerhead thanks for the reply.

The primary partition (XP) is already NTFS and the unallocated one is just that unallocated.

How do I go about formatting just the unallocated partition to NTFS and will this be integrated into the primary one giving me one full 60GB partition for my XP use again?

thanks in advance.

James

[hammerhead]

Hi James

Right click on My Computer and select Manage. On the left select disk management and select your drive. On the unallocated partition, right click and select format. You will have options of which file system you want to use (NTFS or FAT32) choose anyone (I suggest NTFS) and format.

Be careful, do not format your C: drive. Format only that space that you see as unallocated.

This will not integrate into the primary one, it will only create more drives that you can use. I am not sure as to how you can integrate, I guess softwares like partition magic can do that. I am not sure though.

Also read this link
http://support.microsoft.com/kb/309000

[James Mc]

When I right click on the unallocated partition i do not get the option to 'format' only 'new partition', 'properties' or 'help.

Anyways I do need to integrate this partition in to my primary one since it is almost full and pretty useless in this state.

Reading other forums I read that this cannot be done with disk management in XP and can only be done by using a 3rd party tool i.e Partiton Magic.

Anyone know if this is the case and are there any freeware tools that can do the job for me.

Thanks.

[jbennet]

no

XP needs at leat 1gb of free space to run properley.

I dont know about xubuntu, but most livecds include a software called "gparted" which can basically reverse what the installer did (you can use it to enlarge your xp pattition into the free space)

[James Mc]

I am not sure if Gparted is on the live CD.
do i need to use the live CD version of Gparted or could I get that another way and just use it for this?

[James Mc]

I have burnt the Gparted Live CD and I am ready to give this I go 2morrow (right after I back up everything).

If Anybody has any instructions as to what I need to do I would be most greatful

To recap: I have one 60GB HD that currently has two partitions first is WinXP 23.67GB NTFS and the second is 32.21 GB Unallocated. XP keeps warning me that I am almost out of space so I need to re-incoporate this unallocated space back into my primary XP partition.

Thanks in advance.

[jbennet]

yeah basically what xubuntu did was shrink your xp partition, leaving behind free space

what you can do with gparted, is enlarge it into the free space again

BACK UP FIRST. Resizing disks is always dangerous. Ensure you know what you are doing first.

[James Mc]

How do I do this. I have the Gparted LIve CD but I read that I can only do it as long as the "ntfsprogs" package is installed. On the live CD I think it's not, but if you manage to get it online you can "sudo apt-get ntfsprogs"

Help please

[James Mc]

Sorted.

Just used GpartEd LIVE CD to resize my Xp partiton into the unallocated partition.

Quite easy after all. just because I am new I was a bit aprehensive.

Thanks the help guys.
Now to try installing xubuntu again.

[jbennet]

yeah just adhust the slider.

Xubuntu needs no more than 8gb max for system etc.... then your files are more obviously.